ASSEZ DE LARMES ET DE SANG EN LYBIE: RESPECT DE LA VOLONTE DU PEUPLE !

Le colonel KHADAFI, vient d’appeler à la guerre civile en Lybie. Ceci, en demandant à la population, d’aider l’armée et la police à tuer les manifestants qui manifestent pour la liberté et le droit de vivre décemment dans un pays producteur de pétrole.

Or, le dictateur connaît d’importantes défections dans son gouvernement, ses diplomates, son armée. Ainsi, des pilotes de chasse se sont réfugiés sur l’île de Malte .Après le Tunisie, l’Egypte, comme l’écrivait MARX, qui a raison sur ce point : « ce sont les masses qui font l’histoire ! »

Egalement déjà, des villes sont sous le contrôle des manifestants et hélas encore, les forces de sécurité libyennes ont tiré sur le peuple.

Cependant dans la société libyenne, fragmentée, tribale, le pouvoir a cependant recours à des mercenaires extérieurs africains. Ceci, car il commence à douter de sa légitimité. Hélas, bien des pays occidentaux l’avaient considéré ces dernières années, comme un partenaire acceptable, ceci, car il a coopéré contre les islamistes, et Ben Laden.

En vérité, sa hargne, et sa haine, sont celle d’un homme aux abois. En Lybie, les comités populaires, le gouvernement populaire ne gouvernent pas, mais le clan KHADAFI. Au pouvoir depuis 42 ans, certes, son armée bien habillée pour les défilés, mais n’est pas une armée au sens habituel. Cependant, présentement aux abois, les fidèles à Kadhafi tueront encore .Cependant la fin est proche, l’histoire appelle une autre vision dans la réalité des besoins et désirs à satisfaire.

L’ONU, appelle à une enquête internationale, et il sera accusé de crimes contre l’humanité. Cependant, il espère encore conserver la main par sa terreur et avec le temps, se faire oublier et retrouver une légitimité.

Ensuite, le corridor humanitaire demandé depuis L’Egypte et la Tunisie (tiens) pour relier Tripoli est certes nécessaire, mais il faudrait plus ! Après des centaines et peut-être des milliers de morts, il faudrait que le Conseil de sécurité de L’ONU, déploie des casques bleus de protection en Lybie comme devoir d’ingérence humanitaire. Ceci, pour les quelques jours cruciaux à venir pour le destin de ce pays.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE
Ecrivain français, à finalité philosophique au service des peuples
Messager de la culture de la paix de l’UNESCO - Ambassadeur universel de la paix
Représentant français d’ONG internationales de paix et d’harmonie.

BASTANTES LÁGRIMAS Y SANGRE EN LIBIA
¡RESPETO DE LA VOLUNTAD DEL PUEBLO!

El coronel KHADAFI, acaba de llamar a la guerra civil en Libia. Y ello, pidiendo a la población, de ayudar al ejército y la policía a matar los manifestantes que manifiestan para la libertad y el derecho a vivir decentemente en un país productor de petróleo.

Ahora bien, el dictador conoce importantes defecciones en su Gobierno, sus diplomáticos, su ejército. Así pues, pilotos de caza se refugiaron sobre la isla de Malta. Tras Túnez, Egipto, como lo escribía MARX, que tiene razón sobre este punto: ¡“son las masas que hacen la historia! ”

También ya, ciudades están bajo el control de los manifestantes y desgraciadamente aún, las fuerzas de seguridad libias extrajeron contra el pueblo.

Sin embargo en la sociedad libia, fragmentada, tribal, el poder tiene sin embargo recurso a mercenarios exteriores africanos. Y ello, ya que comienza a dudar de su legitimidad. Desgraciadamente, muchos países occidentales lo habían considerado estos últimos años, como un socio aceptable, esto, ya que cooperó contra los islamistas, y Ben Laden.

En verdad, su hosquedad, y su odio, son la de un hombre acorralado. En Libia, los Comités populares, el Gobierno popular no controlan, sino el clan KHADAFI. Al poder desde hace 42 años, ciertamente, su ejército bien equipado para los desfiles, sino no es un ejército en sentido habitual. Sin embargo, actualmente acorralado, el fieles a Kadhafi matarán aún. Sin embargo el final es cercano, la historia requiere otra visión en la realidad de las necesidades y deseos a satisfacer.

La ONU, llama a una investigación internacional, y se acusará de crímenes contra la humanidad. Sin embargo, espera aún conservar la mano por su terror y con el tiempo, hacerse olvidar y encontrar una legitimidad.

¡A continuación, el pasillo humanitario pedido desde Egipto y Túnez (tenga) para conectar Trípoli es ciertamente necesario, pero sería necesario más! Tras centenares y quizá millares de muertes, sería necesario que el Consejo de Seguridad la ONU, despliega cascos azules de protección en Libia como deber de injerencia humanitario. Y ello, para los algunos los próximos días cruciales para el destino de este país.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE

Escritor francés, a finalidad filosófica al servicio del pueblo
Mensajero de la cultura de la paz de la UNESCO - Embajador universal de la paz
Representante francés de ONG internacionales de paz y armonía.

ENOUGH TEARS AND OF BLOOD IN LYBIE
RESPECT OF THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!

Colonel KHADAFI, has just called with the civil war in Lybie. This, while asking the population, to help the army and the police force to kill the demonstrators who express for freedom and the right to life decently in an oil producing country.

However, the dictator knows important defections in his government, his diplomats, his army. Thus, fighter pilots took refuge on the island of Malta. After Tunisia, Egypt, as MARX wrote it, who is right on this point: “in fact the masses make the history! ”

Also already, of the cities are under the control of the demonstrators and alas still, the Libyan security forces shot at the people.

However in the Libyan company, fragmented, tribal, the power has recourse to African external mercenaries however. This, because it starts to doubt its legitimacy. Alas, many Western countries had considered it these last years, like an acceptable partner, this, because he cooperated against the islamist ones, and Ben Laden.

In truth, its aggressiveness, and its hatred, are that of a man to the barks. In Lybie, the popular committees, the popular government do not control, but clan KHADAFI. With the power for 42 years, certainly, its army equipped well for the processions, but has not been an army with the usual direction. However, at present with the barks, the faithful ones to Kadhafi will still kill. However the end is close, the history calls another vision in the reality of the needs and desires to be satisfied.

UNO, calls with an international survey, and he will be shown of crimes against humanity. However, he still hopes to preserve the hand by his terror and with time, to be made forget and find a legitimacy.

Then, the humane corridor required from Egypt and Tunisia (hold) to connect Tripoli are certainly necessary, but it would be necessary more! After hundreds and perhaps of the thousands of deaths, it would be necessary that the Safety advice of UNO, deploys blue helmets of protection in Lybie like having of humane interference. This, for the few crucial days to come for the destiny from this country.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE
Author and singer for peace, the rights and duties human
Messenger of the culture of peace
European and world prize winner of the Academies of the culture and arts.

Solidarity is, indeed, a beautiful thing. It is a way we show our oneness with all of humanity; it is a way to reaffirm our own humanity.

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, where protesters have occupied the State Capitol Building to stop the pending bill that would eliminate workers' right to collective bargaining, echoes of Cairo are everywhere. Local protesterswere elated by the photo of an Egyptian engineer named Muhammad Saladin Nusair holding a sign in Tahrir Square saying "Egypt Supports Wisconsin Workers--One World, One Pain." The signs by protesters in Madison include "Welcome to Wiscairo", "From Egypt to Wisconsin: We Rise Up", and "Government Walker: Our Mubarak." The banner I brought directly from Tahrir Square saying "Solidarity with Egyptian Workers" has been hanging from the balcony of the Capitol alongside solidarity messages from around the country.

My travels from Cairo to Madison seem like one seamless web. After camping out with the students and workers in the Capitol Building, I gave an early morning seminar on what it was like to be an eyewitness to the Egyptian revolution, and the struggles that are taking place right now in places like Libya, Bahrain and Yemen. Folks told me all day how inspiring it was to hear about the uprisings in the Arab world.

Some took the lessons from Cairo literally. Looking around at the capitol building that was starting to show the wear and tear from housing thousands of protesters, I had mentioned that in Cairo the activists were constantly scrubbing the square, determined to show how much they loved the space they had liberated. A few hours later, in Madison's rotunda, people were on their hands and knees scrubbing the marble floor. "We're quick learners," one of the high school students told me, smiling as she picked at the remains of oreo cookies sticking to the floor.

I heard echoes of Cairo in the Capitol hearing room where a nonstop line of people had gathered all week to give testimonies. The Democratic Assemblymembers have been giving folks a chance to voice their concerns about the governor's pending bill. In this endless stream of heartfelt testimonies, people talk about the impact this bill will have on their own families--their take-home pay, their healthcare, their pensions. They talk about the governor manufacturing the budget crisis to break the unions. They talk about the history of workers' struggles to earn living wages and have decent benefits. And time and again, I heard people say "I saw how the Egyptian people were able to rise up and overthrow a 30-year dictatorship, and that inspired me to rise up and fight this bill."

Solidarity is, indeed, a beautiful thing. It is a way we show our oneness with all of humanity; it is a way to reaffirm our own humanity. CODEPINK sent flowers to the people in Tahrir Square--a gesture that was received with kisses, hugs and tears from the Egyptians. The campers in Madison erupted in cheer when they heard that an Egyptian had called the local pizza place, Ians Pizza, and placed a huge order to feed the protesters. "Pizza never tasted so good," a Wisconsin fireman commented when he was told that the garlic pizza he was eating had come from supporters in Cairo. Egyptian engineer Muhammad Saladin Nusair, the one whose photo supporting Wisconsin workers went viral, now has thousands of new American Facebook friends. He wrote in his blog that many of his new friends were surprised by his gesture of solidarity, but he was taught that "we live in ONE world and under the same sky."

"If a human being doesn't feel the pain of his fellow human beings, then everything we've created and established since the very beginning of existence is in great danger," Muhammad wrote. "We shouldn't let borders and differences separate us. We were made different to complete each other, to integrate and live together. One world, one pain, one humanity, one hope." From the trenches of Madison's State Capitol Building, hope--and solidarity--are alive and well.

Currently, there is growing attention both in scholarly and popular writing with the process of globalization. Globalization is an empirical process of world integration driven by a variety of economic, cultural, political, and ideological forces as seen in such areas as market expansion, a global production pattern as well as cultural homogenisation. In the fields of economics, politics, technology, environment and health, we see greater collaboration and interdependence. Now, international conferences, common trade agreements and multinational projects are striving to find solutions to long-standing difficulties and to promote development in areas where the problems have become too great to be resolved by a single State. We are learning, out of necessity, that competition has its limits. To give one example, many of the issues in trade negotiations which go on in Geneva are about labour standards, environmental policies and human rights (such as products fabricated by child labour). These are all deeply domestic matters which have now become part of international affairs.

Has education been changing as quickly as the world economy? How are we preparing children to meet the demands of the world society? What role are schools playing in the formation of active world citizens able to make real contributions to the creation of a more peaceful society?

Education is uniquely placed to help deal with the major problems facing the world society: violent conflict, poverty, the destruction of the natural environment, and other fundamental issues touching human beings everywhere. Education provides information, skills and helps to shape values and attitudes. Yet many children fall outside formal education. Some 113 million school-age children are out of school, and some 875 million adults are illiterate. This is evidence of the fact that the size and complexity of education for all are too great for governments alone to address, even with the best of intentions and effort.

It is true that education is not limited to the formal school system. There are many agents of education: family, media, peers, and associations of all sorts. Nevertheless, schools play a central role, and people expect schools to be leaders in the educational process. Unfortunately, there are times when schools are left alone as the only conscious instrument of education. Therefore, teachers need to analyse how other agents of society contribute to the educational process or, more negatively, may hinder the educational process or promote destructive attitudes and values.

Education has two related aims. One is to help the student to function in society, be it the local, the national, and the world society. The other aim is to help in the fullest development of the individual’s physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual capacities.

There are three related ways to help prepare students for a fast-changing world in which people, ideas, goods and services increasingly cross State frontiers. These ways are related to:

1) skills,
2) content,
3) values and attitudes.

There is a need to teach those skills needed to be able to function effectively in the world: skills of goal setting, analysis, problem solving, research, communication, and conflict-resolution skills. We need to place more emphasis on communication skills in our schools with an emphasis on personal expression through language and the arts. Children need opportunities to acquire skills in writing, speech, drama, music, painting and other arts in order to find their own voices and expressions.

The second area of importance concerns the content of education with an emphasis on modern history and geography, ecology, economics, civics, and the history of science and technology. There is also a need to organize a curriculum through the use of broad themes such as interdependence, change, complexity, culture and conflict.

The third area concerns values and attitudes needed for living in a global society: self-confidence in one’s own capacity, concern and interest in others, an openness to the cultural contributions of other societies. There needs to be a willingness to live with complexity, to refuse easy answers or to shift blame to others. In practice, a good teacher makes a personalized combination of all these elements.

One must be realistic in evaluating the difficulties of restructuring educational systems to make them future oriented and open to the world. We all know the heavy structures of educational systems and the pressures to conform to the status quo. We must not underestimate the narrow nationalistic pressures on the teaching of social issues nor the political influences on content and methods.

In order to understand the limits and the possibilities of change, teachers must be prepared to carry out research on the local community. They must be able to analyse their specific communities. It is always dangerous to make wide generalizations on the role of the family, the media, of religion as if it were always the same in all parts of the country or the same in all social classes and milieu.

Thus, teachers should be able, with some sociological training, to carry out studies on the formation of attitudes, values and skills of their students by looking at the respective role of the family, the content of the media, and student participation in associations. Such studies can be carried out in a cooperative way among several teachers so as to be able to go to greater depth. Teachers could look for information to help answer such questions as “Are any groups excluded from participating in the community?” “How can possible marginalisation be counteracted?” “How can one study environmental and ecological issues locally?” “What is the significance of different role models such as peers, parents, and educators?” “In what ways can non-formal and informal learning environments be furthered?”

There are more and more teachers who realise the direction of current world trends. Migration puts other cultures on one’s door step. We all need to be encouraged by the advances being made. We can help one another so that we may develop the culture of peace and active world citizenship together.

* Rene Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

The United Nations General Assembly, on the initiative of Nurbch Jeenbrev, the Ambassador of Kyrgyzstan to the U.N. in New York, has proclaimed 20 February as the “World Day of Social Justice” with an emphasis on the reduction of poverty. The “war” on global poverty has had its share of victories. Life expectancy at birth has risen in many developing countries. Education for some has resulted in rising incomes, but such education has left the uneducated further behind.

Economic growth does not help the poor much in countries where the distribution of wealth is highly unequal. The poor in many countries do not enjoy the benefits of boom times, but they shoulder the costs when there is an economic recession. As traditional family or clan-based welfare systems decline without new government-funded institutions put into place, many are marginalized.

This year the second World Day of Social Justice comes as the people’s revolution sweeps through the Arab lands of North Africa and the Middle East. The cry of the Tunisian uprising — “Liberty-Work-Dignity” — finds its expression in many countries as people organize non-violently for new societies.

The term “the People’s Revolution” was officially used by Henry A. Wallace, then Vice-President of the United States in setting out US war aims in 1942. This was the first time that the war aims of a country were not stated in terms of “national interest” and limited to the demands that had produced the start of the war. Wallace, who had first been the Secretary of Agriculture and who had to deal with the severe depression facing US agriculture, was proposing a world-wide New Deal based on the cooperative action of all of humanity. Wallace said “The people’s revolution is on the march. When the freedom-loving people march — when the farmers have an opportunity to buy land at reasonable prices and to see the produce of their land through their own organizations, when workers have the opportunity to form unions and bargain through them collectively, and when the children of all the people have an opportunity to attend schools which teach them truths of the real world in which they live — when these opportunities are open to everyone, then the world moves straight ahead…The people are on the march toward ever fuller freedom, toward manifesting here on earth the dignity that is in every human soul.”

Today in the demands of “Liberty-Work-Dignity” we hear the demands of farmers to own land under sure conditions, to receive a fair price for their crops as well as the right to organize to protect their interests. We hear the crises of industrial and urban workers to be able to organize and to have their work appreciated for its full value. We hear the demands of students and the young for an education that opens minds and prepares for meaningful work.

The people’s revolution is on the march. While the forces of the status quo are still strong and often heavily armed, the energy has shifted from the rulers to the people. The demands of those in the streets of Tunisia and Egypt have given courage to others who now are in streets where few ever expected to hear crises of protest.

The governments of the USA and Western Europe who spend a good deal of money on “intelligence agencies” were largely surprised by the speed with which the protests have spread. No doubt the Chinese and the Russians were also surprised but have been less willing to admit that they do not understand social movements unrelated to their old ideologies.

It is also probable that the Ambassador of Kyrgyzstan when he helped celebrate the first World Day of Social Justice in 2010 did not think he was setting the stage for the people’s revolution. The U.N. General Assembly proclaims a good number of Days without creating many waves beyond New York City. But the concept of Social Justice has articulated and focused deep demands for liberty, jobs, and dignity.

Some have been surprised – even alarmed – that the people’s revolution in Tunisia and Egypt did not have recognized leaders or an organized political party structure. But the people’s revolution is not that of an elite willing to replace the existing ruling elite. The people’s revolution is a wave of all moving together, with deep currents below the surface. The tide moves with only a few visible waves but the aspirations are collective. No doubt, there will be individualized leadership, and demands will be formulated into political-party platforms, but the collective demands for social justice and dignity is what makes the difference between the people’s revolution and a military coup. This is the true meaning of this year’s World Day of Social Justice.

* Rene Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

Surely, I said
Now will the poets sing
But they have raised no cry
I wonder why
Country Cullen Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song

We, citizens of the world, determined to safeguard future generations from war, poverty, injustice, and environmental degradation, have always stood for a simple yet powerful idea: that humanity on this planet, must think of itself as one society and must unite in developing the basic policies that advance peace with justice.

The Right to Life — a reverence for life — is the core value upon which our efforts for human rights, for the resolution of conflicts, and for ecologically-sound development is based

Thus, we are encouraged by the waves of efforts for democracy and social justice that are sweeping over North Africa and the Middle East. We salute the courage of those who have brought change and an opportunity for justice in Tunisia and Egypt. The people’s revolution for dignity and social justice is on the march. The march will not be broken, although the old structures of repression try to hold back the future with force.

We are sad when we note a loss of life in different countries throughout North Africa and the Middle East, nearly always the life of a protester at the hands of the military, the police or militia forces.

We are particularly concerned with the repression and loss of life due to the forces of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi in Libya. Although foreign journalists have been refused entry and internet and phone lines have been disrupted, we have received reports made in good faith of widespread repression and killings by special commandoes and government-sponsored snipers. These actions seem to constitute a widespread and systematic practice.

Therefore, we first call upon the Government of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to uphold universally-recognized human rights and to prevent the disproportionate use of force by its agents.

Secondly, we call upon the Member States of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which has the duty to address situations of the systematic violation of human rights, to organize an Emergency Special Session to mandate a fact-finding team of independent experts to collect information on possible violations of international human rights law.

Thirdly, we call upon the representatives of Non-Governmental Organizations and other representatives of civil society to raise their voices so that all will hear their determination to protect the Right to Life and Human Dignity.

When in 1931 in the USA, the Scottsboro Boys — a group of nine Blacks — were tried for rape in Alabama under conditions which prevented a fair trial, the poet Countree Cullen was listening for the voices of protest, for the calls for justice, but he heard no such cries and wondered why.

Let it not be said of us that when the blood of protesters in Libya flowed into the sand, no cries were heard.

* Rene Wadlow, Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

UXBRIDGE - Thawing permafrost is threatening to overwhelm attempts to keep the planet from getting too hot for human survival.

Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, as much as two-thirds of the world's gigantic storehouse of frozen carbon could be released, a new study reported. That would push global temperatures several degrees higher, making large parts of the planet uninhabitable.

Once the Arctic gets warm enough, the carbon and methane emissions from thawing permafrost will kick-start a feedback that will amplify the current warming rate, says Kevin Schaefer, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado. That will likely be irreversible.

And we're less than 20 years from this tipping point. Schaefer prefers to use the term "starting point" for when the 13 million square kilometres of permafrost in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe becomes a major new source of carbon emissions.

"Our model projects a starting point 15 to 20 years from now," Schaefer told IPS.

The model used a 'middle of the road' scenario with less fossil fuel use than at present. Even at that rate, it found that between 29 and 60 percent of the world's permafrost will thaw, releasing an extra 190 gigatonnes of carbon by 2200. The study is the first to quantify when and how much carbon will be released and was published this week in the meteorological journal Tellus.

"The amount of carbon released is equivalent to half the amount of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age," Schaefer said.

The additional carbon from permafrost would increase the average temperatures in the Arctic by eight to 10 degrees C, the study reported. Not only would this utterly transform the Arctic, it would also increase the planet's average temperature by about three degrees C, agrees Schaefer.

And this increase would be on top of the three to six degrees C from continuing to burn fossil fuels over the next 100 years. The Earth's normal average temperature is 14C, so heating up the entire planet another six to nine degrees C would be like increasing our body temperatures from the normal 37C to a deadly fever of 53 to 60 degrees C.

As catastrophic as all this is, Schaefer acknowledges his study underestimates what is likely to happen. The model does not measure methane releases, which are 40 times as potent in terms of warming as carbon. Methane could have a big impact on temperatures in the short term, he says.

"There would be a lot of methane emissions. We're working on estimating those right now," he said.

The model also does not include emissions from the large region of underwater permafrost. IPS previously reported that an estimated eight million tonnes of methane emissions are bubbling to the surface from the shallow East Siberian Arctic shelf every year.

If just one percent of the Arctic undersea methane (also called methane hydrates) reaches the atmosphere, it could quadruple the amount of methane currently in the atmosphere, Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks previously told IPS.

Nor does the model account for a process called thermokarst erosion, acknowledges Schaefer. This is a widely observed process where meltwater erodes the permafrost and exposes it to warmer temperatures and speeding up the thaw. "We can't model that yet but it could contribute to major releases of carbon and methane," he said.

None of this has been taken into account by politicians and policy makers looking to cut humanity's carbon emissions with the agreed on target of keeping global temperatures below two degrees C.

Nor is there a wide appreciation for the fact there is no 'reverse gear'. Even if all fossil fuel use stopped today, global temperatures would continue to rise and permafrost would thaw for another 20 to 30 years, Schaefer estimates. And once the permafrost carbon is released, "there is no way to put it back into the permafrost".

Even if there was a way to lower the Earth's human-induced fever, it would take a century or more for thawed permafrost to reform, he said.

Permafrost has been warming and thawing since the 1980s. A 2009 study reported that the southernmost permafrost limit had retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years in Quebec's James Bay region. The major loss of sea ice in the Arctic allows the Arctic Ocean to become much warmer, which in turn has increased temperatures of coastal regions an average of three to five degrees C warmer than 30 years ago.

More ominously, large parts of the eastern Arctic were 21C higher above normal for a month in the dead of winter this year, as previously reported by IPS.

However, while on the edge of a most dangerous precipice, there is a safer path available. A new energy analysis demonstrates that fossil fuel energy could be virtually phased out by 2050 while offering comfortable lifestyles for all. The Energy Report by Ecofys, a leading energy consulting firm in the Netherlands, shows that humanity could meet 95 percent of energy needs with renewables utilising today's technologies.

"The Energy Report shows that in four decades we can have a world of vibrant economies and societies powered entirely by clean, cheap and renewable energy and with a vastly improved quality of life," said WWF Director General Jim Leape.

WWF worked on the report with Ecofys.

"The report is more than a scenario – it's a call for action. We can achieve a cleaner, renewable future, but we must start now," Leape said in a statement.

© 2011 IPS North America

The scientific community has long agreed that our dependence on fossil fuels inflicts massive damage on the environment and our health, while warming the globe in the process. But beyond the damage these fuels cause to us now, what will happen when the world's supply of oil runs out?

In a new video series from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, Nicole Foss, Richard Heinberg and other scientists, researchers and writers explain.

Go here to learn more about "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," and to see the other videos in the series.

At some point in our lives, most of us realized that there is no place that we could stand on the side of mother earth and not be asked, “by what right are you here?” Do we have a rent receipt, a park pass, a ticket, a passport? Even the rare humans in the Amazonian interior cannot get out of Brazil without a passport.

And when I do have a rent receipt, who is it that “benevolently” and tentatively extend those rights to me? An armed gang of thugs who call themselves “civilization” own mother earth. This loosely organized gang of thugs are composed, usually, into a male hierarchy, generally referred to as the planetary, military patriarchy. This gender imbalanced, group of fat bankers in business suits, with Generals at their side, owns the earth. These are the descendants of the original patriarchs who began the warfare – looting -death oriented, empire culture, who apparently believed that because males are larger and stronger, they should kill the opposition and loot the earth of material goods, which they call “wealth” and conflate with “power.”

Now, they have done it. They have looted the earth almost to its death. Babylon ecologically destroyed Iraq, the Indus Empire ecologically destroyed the Indus Valley, the Han Chinese ecologically destroyed China and the Greek and Roman empires ecologically destroyed North Africa and Italy and now the patriarchs are sucking the life force out of the whole earth. The patriarchs are not standing on the living earth, they exist in a mentally conditioned bubble that tells them that the more the earth dies, the better things get. They call it the sacred growth. They babble incessantly about economics, politics, and fast cars. At the universities they have answers to all questions, but the reality here on the earth is simple.

The Giant Vacuum Cleaner They Call Economics

They have set up a giant vacuum machine that can identify any valuable biological activity on the earth. Down here on the earth, the soil community of millions of members slowly builds up surpluses. In optimum ecologies, this community can produce one inch of topsoil in three hundred to nine hundred years. The giant machine identifies the biologically rich areas of soils, fish stocks, forests, grasslands and so forth in which to plug its tentacles. The sucking sound is the life force leaving our planet. Of course, they babble on about their theories of economics and politics as they try to justify their methods of sharing the loot, which they have sucked out of the planet’s life force. In this culturally conditioned reality bubble, we have more regard for the house made of dead trees than we have for the living forest itself.

The industrialists prattle on about value. What is it that makes our loot valuable? The industrial Marxist, in his bubble, says that it is human labor that makes things valuable, the voice from the industrial capitalist bubble says it is whatever people will pay.

Back on the earth, the life force maintains a web of energy flows. The sunlight is consumed, photosynthesis increases biomass, the leaf falls from the tree, it becomes food for the soil community, which creates fertility for the tree. This exemplifies the vastly more manifold and complex web of life of the earth. No life form attempts to take over the whole. Each lives according to its nature in dynamic balance with the web of life.

Therefore, each life form that exists in dynamic balance within the web of life has a right to be here on earth because it’s part of the function. In addition, because the local conditions in the cosmos have created the environment for life to exist on earth, we can say that the life form has even cosmic rights. Therefore, if you are existing in dynamic balance with the web of life of the planet earth, YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO BE HERE ON THIS PLANET EARTH, otherwise you and I are biologically illegitimate criminals intent on murdering our mother.

When we examine, say, our own liver, we see a cell community happily cooperating with the body’s design in doing liver things. In some extreme case we might see a small group of cells cancerously declare that they don’t like the cosmic design and they commit to creating a (tumor) body of their own design. They then begin sucking the life force out of the larger body and growing their own tumor body until the larger body dies.

We are now at the crime scene. There are individual life forms loose on the planet that are cancerously sucking the life out of larger benign bodies. We call ourselves, “the civilized.” And how did this criminal enterprise begin?

For several million years our species lived very successfully on the earth, embedded in the ecological energy flows as forager/hunters. With our encyclopedic knowledge of the living earth, we knew plants come from seeds and also where the seeds should be planted. Many forager/hunters planted seeds along the foraging routes, to return later. But, at some point, some humans decided that they didn’t like the design of the larger body and began the practice of agriculture as a way of life. This was the fateful decision that has almost sealed the fate of our planet.

What happened on the ground? Those humans stopped the foraging migrations and became embedded in one spot. They began to suck biological surpluses from the soil with farming and grazing. They accumulated food and material objects in their buildings. Because they had “wealth” to protect, a male, military hierarchy was created. They were protecting material goods and thus materialism came into the new culture. The idea of linear increase, growth, progress became imbedded in the culture as the patriarchs began to envision “bigger barns and broader acres.”(1)

Steven Mithen, in his book, After the Ice, describes a neolithic village called Ain Ghazal, in the Mid-East. The archeologists, going down the layers find animal bones and pollen counts that indicate an original luxury of animals and plants, including farm produce. As time went on, the two thousand person town was reduced to zero as the wild game disappeared, the soils were exhausted and eroded and the trees cut down.(2) In some “civilized” cultures the people didn’t disappear, but the problem metastasized. If one sucks the biological energy out of their area, they have to spread out and conquer new soils, forests and grasslands and get on the path toward empire.

From this mix we get “civilization,” a brutish mass of mutant, hyper-male killers who’s culture makes famous mass, serial killers such as Alexander the Great, Caligula, George Bush and Ted Bundy.

Our species made a terminal mistake. We did not observe the first principle of living on the earth – ECOLOGICAL BALANCE, and the second, LIFE HAS VALUE.

We Are Now Ready To Overthrow The Pathological Patriarch

Millions of us are now ready. They call us “alternatives,” “cultural creatives,” “hippies,” “radicals,” un-Russian, un-British and un-American. Out of the intuition of the masses has come the new culture. The new culture emphasizes gender balance and consensus government. The new culture of non- industrial medical care points to herbal medicine, energy medicine, Reiki, nutrition, naturopathic, yoga, homeopathic, yoga, and much more.

Many have thought we are trying to wear loin cloths and eat roots and berries. Although our forager/hunter ancestors were successful, there have been many human cultures that have existed in ecological balance. It is ecological balance, not loin cloths that we are discussing. The Nabateans of the Negev Desert in the Mid-East, from 200 b.c. to 100 a.d. created a superlative civilization out of a barren desert with human creativity. Anthropologist D.A. Posey describes the Kayapo´ of the Amazon who grow well over 100 different species in their rainforest gardens (which to the uninitiated look like more rainforest) of an acre or less.(3) The Inca Civilization existed without ecological destruction.

We now have Permaculture as a balanced way of getting our nutrition from the earth. Permaculture is a wholistic body of strategies that seeks to mimic ecological processes and can grow more food per acre than the industrial system while building the soil and providing homes for other creatures.

We now have a huge alternative building movement of straw bale, cob, rammed earth, earth bag, adobe, and much more that rely on local materials. We now have alternative solar homes that can heat and cool themselves without outside energy.

We have the Global Ecovillage Network (4) which has thousands of ecovillage members around the planet all pointed toward self-sufficiency and Balance with the life force.

We have “alternative” people who are expanding the human potential by perceiving and communicating with the life force of the planet.(5)

We even have new wave economists who lay out a plan for a new cooperative economy. (6)

People living with nature, on the land, in ecovillages with an artisan economy are the picture of social stability and self-sufficiency. With this means we can establish a culture that can prevent hierarchy and can prevent the creation of surpluses that would support militaries, dictators, emperors, shopping mall addicts and centralized governments.

We are now living out the last gasps of materialistic, industrial civilization and the dying away of the flesh of our planet, with its exploding population and dwindling resources. If there were any maturity in the human societies they would be glad to sponsor experimental communities such as ecovillages. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the death culture could push through a few surviving ecologically balanced human communities past the apocalypse to become the seeds of the new human culture based on the principles of life?

(1) Chapter 9, The Cultural Dynamics of Empire. The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. Wm. H. Kötke.

(2) After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5,000 B C. P. 87.

(3)Indigenous Peoples and Tropical Rainforests: Models of Land Use. Cultural Survival Report #27. Jason W. Clay. 1988.

(4) http://www.gen.ecovillage.org

(5)Plant Spirit Healing: A Guide to Working With Plant Consciousness. Pam Montgomery. Bear & Co. 2008.

The Secret Teachings of Plants: The Direct Perception of Nature. Stephen Harrod Buhner. Bear & Co. 2004.

(6) http://www.ied.info/blog/1414/an-understandable-full-and-equal-rights-economy-in-170-words

Wm. H. Kötke is the author of The Final Empire (www.thefinalempirebook.com) and Garden Planet. He also has a garden and a full root cellar.

The United States is poised to bet its energy future on natural gas as a clean, plentiful fuel that can supplant coal and oil. But new research by the Environmental Protection Agency — and a growing understanding of the pollution associated with the full "life cycle" of gas production—is casting doubt on the assumption that gas offers a quick and easy solution to climate change.

Advocates for natural gas routinely assert that it produces 50 percent less greenhouse gases than coal and is a significant step toward a greener energy future. But those assumptions are based on emissions from the tailpipe or smokestack and don't account for the methane and other pollution emitted when gas is extracted and piped to power plants and other customers.

The EPA's new analysis doubles its previous estimates for the amount of methane gas that leaks from loose pipe fittings and is vented from gas wells, drastically changing the picture of the nation's emissions that the agency painted as recently as April. Calculations for some gas-field emissions jumped by several hundred percent. Methane levels from the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas were 9,000 times higher than previously reported.

When all these emissions are counted, gas may be as little as 25 percent cleaner than coal, or perhaps even less.

Even accounting for the new analysis, natural gas—which also emits less toxic and particulate pollution—offers a significant environmental advantage. But the narrower the margins get, the weaker the political arguments become and the more power utilities flinch at investing billions to switch to a fuel that may someday lose the government's long-term support.

Understanding exactly how much greenhouse gas pollution comes from drilling is especially important, because the Obama administration has signaled that gas production may be an island of common political ground in its never-ending march toward an energy bill. The administration and Congress are seeking not just a steady, independent supply of energy, but a fast and drastic reduction in the greenhouse gases associated with climate change.

Billions of cubic feet of climate-changing greenhouse gases—roughly the equivalent of the annual emissions from 35 million automobiles—seep from loose pipe valves or are vented intentionally from gas production facilities into the atmosphere each year, according to the EPA. Gas drilling emissions alone account for at least one-fifth of human-caused methane in the world's atmosphere, the World Bank estimates, and as more natural gas is drilled, the EPA expects these emissions to increase dramatically.

When scientists evaluate the greenhouse gas emissions of energy sources over their full lifecycle and incorporate the methane emitted during production, the advantage of natural gas holds true only when it is burned in more modern and efficient plants.

But roughly half of the 1,600 gas-fired power plants in the United States operate at the lowest end of the efficiency spectrum. And even before the EPA sharply revised its data, these plants were only 32 percent cleaner than coal, according to a lifecycle analysis by Paulina Jaramillo, an energy expert and associate professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Now that the EPA has doubled its emissions estimates, the advantages are slimmer still. Based on the new numbers, the median gas-powered plant in the United States is just 40 percent cleaner than coal, according to calculations ProPublica made based on Jaramillo's formulas. Those 800 inefficient plants offer only a 25 percent improvement.

Other scientists say the pollution gap between gas and coal could shrink even more. That's in part because the primary pollutant from natural gas, methane, is far more potent than other greenhouse gases, and scientists are still trying to understand its effect on the climate—and because it continues to be difficult to measure exactly how much methane is being emitted.

In November the EPA announced new greenhouse gas reporting rules for the oil and gas industry. For the first time under the Clean Air Act, the nation's guiding air quality law, thousands of small facilities will have to be counted in the pollution reporting inventory, a change that might also lead to higher measurements.

The natural gas industry, in the meantime, has pressed hard for subsidies and guarantees that would establish gas as an indispensible source of American energy and create a market for the vast new gas reserves discovered in recent years. The industry would like to see new power plants built to run on gas, automobile infrastructure developed to support gas vehicles and a slew of other ambitious plans that would commit the United States to a reliance on gas for decades to come.

But if it turns out that natural gas offers a more modest improvement over coal and oil, as the new EPA data begin to suggest, then billions of dollars of taxpayer and industry investment in new infrastructure, drilling and planning could be spent for limited gain.

"The problem is you build a gas plant for 40 years. That's a long bridge," said James Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, one of the nation's largest power companies. Duke generates more than half of its electricity from coal, but Rogers has also been a vocal proponent of cap-and-trade legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Rogers worries that a blind jump to gas could leave the country dependent on yet another fossil resource, without stemming the rate of climate change.

"What if, with revelations around methane emissions, it turns out to be only a 10 or 20 percent reduction of carbon from coal? If that's true," he said, "gas is not the panacea."

The American Petroleum Institute said in an e-mailed response that federal offshore drilling rules are already cutting down on the emissions tallied by the government. Spokesmen for the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the natural gas lobbying groups Energy in Depth, American Clean Skies Foundation and America's Natural Gas Alliance, which have all been pushing to expand the use of gas, declined to comment on the EPA's new figures and what they mean for the comparison between gas and coal.

But industry groups point out that gas looks attractive compared to the alternatives.

Nuclear energy is less polluting than gas from a climate-changing perspective, but it is costly and viewed skeptically in the United States because of the dangers of disposing of radioactive waste. So-called "clean coal"—including underground carbon sequestration—could work, but the technology has repeatedly stalled, remains unproven, and is at least 15 years away. Renewable sources like wind and solar are being developed rapidly, but the energy is expensive and won't provide a commanding supply of electricity for decades.

Gas, on the other hand, is plentiful, accessible and local.

Methane Is a Potent Climate Gas

Measuring the amount of natural gas that is leaking during drilling is one challenge. Getting a grip on how that gas—which is mostly methane—affects the environment, and what effect it will have on global warming, is another. And on that, some scientists still disagree.

Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, as well as methane, propane and lesser-known gases that also affect climate change. For the purposes of standardization, all these gases are described together using the unit Co2e, or carbon dioxide "equivalent." But because each gas has a different potency, or "warming" effect on the atmosphere, a factor is applied to convert it to an equivalent of carbon dioxide.

Methane, the primary component of natural gas and among the more potent greenhouse gases, has far more of an effect on climate change than carbon dioxide. But determining the factor that should be applied to measure its relative warming affect is still being debated.

To crunch its numbers, the EPA calculated the average concentration of methane in the atmosphere over a 100-year period and determined that over that period methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Using that equation, a ton of methane emissions is the equivalent of 21 tons of carbon dioxide.

But some scientists argue that the impact of methane gas should be calculated over a shorter time period, because methane degrades quickly, and because gas drilling releases large quantities of methane into the atmosphere all at once, likely concentrating and amplifying the effect.

Robert Howarth, an environmental biology professor at Cornell University, used research from the United Nations to calculate that if methane's potency were considered over 20 years rather than 100 years, it would be 72 times as powerful as carbon dioxide in terms of its warming potential.

Figured that way, the climate effect of methane from natural gas would quickly outpace the climate effect of carbon dioxide from burning coal. Howarth's research is incomplete and has been criticized because at first he failed to figure in methane emissions from coal mining. But he said that after correcting his error, the emissions from coal barely changed, and the data still showed that the intensity of methane could erase the advantages of using natural gas.

"Even small leakages of natural gas to the atmosphere have very large consequences," Howarth wrote in a March memorandum [2], which he says is a precursor to a more thorough study that could begin to scientifically answer these questions. "When the total emissions of greenhouse gases are considered...natural gas and coal from mountaintop removal probably have similar releases, and in fact natural gas may be worse in terms of consequences on global warming."

Howarth says his latest calculations show that the type of shale gas drilling taking place in parts of Texas, New York and Pennsylvania leads to particularly high emissions and would likely be just as dirty as coal.

Environmental groups say factual data on how much methane is emitted from gas fields—and what the warming affect of that methane is—should be locked down before major policy decisions are made to shift the nation toward more reliance on gas.

"You can't just assume away some of these sources as de minimus," said Tom Singer, a senior policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council who focuses on emissions reporting in New Mexico. "You need to get a handle on them before you can make a determination."

Less Pollution Means More Profit

The EPA tracks fugitive and vented methane emissions through a program called Natural Gas STAR and then works to get drilling companies to save money by stanching their leaks and selling the gas they capture for profit. It was a discrepancy in the Gas STAR data that prompted the EPA to sharply revise the government's greenhouse gas statistics late last year.

According to Gas STAR's most recent figures, at least 1.6 percent of all the natural gas produced in the United States each year, about 475 billion cubic feet, is assumed to be leaked or vented during production. But those numbers were reported before the EPA adjusted its greenhouse gas estimates, and they are expected to rise when the new estimates are plugged into the calculation. If companies could capture even the gas leaked in Gas STAR's current estimates, it would be worth $2.1 billion a year at today's prices and would cut the nation's emissions by more than 2 percent right off the bat. Several studies show that maintaining and installing equipment to capture the emissions pays for itself within 24 months.

Gas STAR has seen some success in pushing companies to use these capture tools. The EPA's 2010 greenhouse gas inventory, using 2008 data, shows that even though more gas is being produced from more wells, total emissions from that production have decreased by more than 26 percent since 1990, mostly due to the progress of Gas STAR. But while these figures demonstrate that Gas STAR is effective in lowering the annual rate of emissions, the EPA's new figures essentially move the starting point, and, when recalculated, 2008 emissions are now understood to have been 53 percent higher than emissions in 1990.

That doesn't mean the program isn't working—it is. It simply means that the road to making reductions significant enough to affect the rate of climate change is much longer than expected.

The EPA now reports that emissions from conventional hydraulic fracturing are 35 times higher than the agency had previously estimated. It also reports that emissions from the type of hydraulic fracturing being used in the nation's bountiful new shale gas reserves, like the Marcellus, are almost 9,000 times higher than it had previously calculated, a figure that begins to correspond with Robert Howarth's research at Cornell.

Clean Enough to Count On?

Getting a solid estimate of the total lifecycle emissions from natural gas is critical not only to President Obama's—and Congress'—decisions about the nation's energy and climate strategy, but also to future planning for the nation's utilities.

Even small changes in the lifecycle emissions figures for gas would eventually affect policy and incentives for the utility industry, and ultimately make a big difference in how gas stacks up against its alternatives.

Rogers, the Duke executive, says the country's large promised reserves of natural gas must also hold up for gas to prove beneficial, in terms of both cost and climate. If domestic reserves turn out to be smaller than predicted, or the nation runs out of gas and turns to liquefied gas imported from overseas, then the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas would be almost equal to coal, Jaramillo pointed out in her 2007 lifecycle analysis, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology [3]. That's because the additional processing and shipping of liquefied gas would put even more greenhouse gas pollution into the atmosphere.

"In the 60's we put a needle in one arm—it was called oil," Rogers said. "If the shale gas doesn't play out as predicted, and we build a lot of gas plants in this country, and we don't drill offshore, we're going to be putting the needle in the other arm and it's going to be called gas."

The utilities are in a bind because they have to build new power plants to meet the nation's demand for energy, while anticipating an as-yet-undefined set of federal climate and emissions regulations that they believe are inevitable. Do they build new gas-fired plants, which can cost $2 billion and take three years to bring online? Or do they wait for proven systems that can capture carbon from coal-fired plants and sequester it underground?

If carbon sequestration works, coal-based power emissions could drop by 90 percent, said Nick Akins, president of American Electric Power, the nation's largest electric utility and the number-one emitter of greenhouse gas pollution. That suggests to Akins that natural gas may not be the solution to the nation's energy needs, but rather the transitional fuel that bridges the gap to cleaner technologies.

"Going from a 100 percent CO2 emitter to a 50 percent solution when you could go beyond that is something we need to turn our attention to," said Akins. "If there is a 90 percent solution for coal, and other forms like nuclear, and renewables, then obviously you want to push in that direction as well."

Correction: The article originally misstated that methane, at least 21 times more potent than CO2, is the most potent of greenhouse gases. The article should have stated that it is among the more potent greenhouse gases.

A mass movement engaged in mass disruption can topple a tyrant equipped with fearsome weapons of mass destruction.

Memo to President Obama: Given the absence of intelligent intelligence and the inadequacy of your advisers’ advice, it’s not surprising that your handling of the Egyptian uprising has set new standards for foreign policy incoherence and incompetence.  Perhaps a primer on how to judge the power that can be wielded by mass protest will prepare you better for the next round of political upheavals.

Remember the uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989?  That was also a huge, peaceful protest for democracy, but it was crushed with savage violence.  Maybe the memory of that event convinced you and your team that, as Secretary of State Clinton announced when the protests began, the Mubarak regime was “stable” and in “no danger of falling.” Or maybe your confidence rested on the fact that it featured a disciplined modern army trained and supplied by the USA.

But it fell, and you should have known that it was in grave danger.  You should have known that the prognosis for this uprising was far better than the one that ended in a massacre in Tiananmen Square; that it was more likely to follow the pattern of people power in Tunisia, where only weeks before another autocrat had been driven from power, or Iran in 1979 and Poland in 1989.

Since your intelligence people, including the CIA, obviously didn’t tell you, let me offer you an explanation for why the Egyptian protesters proved so much more successful in fighting off the threat and reality of violence than their Chinese compatriots, and why they were so much better equipped to deter an attack by a standing army.  Most importantly, let me fill you in on why, by simply staying in the streets and adhering to their commitment to nonviolence, they were able to topple a tyrant with 30 years seniority and the backing of the United States from the pinnacle of power, sweeping him into the dustbin of history.  

When Does an Army Choose to Be Nonviolent?

One possible answer -- a subtext of mainstream media coverage -- is that the Egyptian military, unlike its Chinese counterpart, decided not to crush the rebellion, and that this forbearance enabled the protest to succeed.  However, this apparently reasonable argument actually explains nothing unless we can answer two intertwined questions that flow from it.

The first is: Why was the military so restrained this time around, when for 50 years, “it has stood at the core of a repressive police state”?  The second is: Why couldn’t the government, even without a military ready to turn its guns on the demonstrators, endure a few more days, weeks, or months of protest, while waiting for the uprising to exhaust itself, and -- as the BBC put it -- “have the whole thing fizzle out”?

The answer to both questions lies in the remarkable impact that the protest had on the Egyptian economy. Mubarak and his cohort (as well as the military, which is the country’s economic powerhouse) were alarmedthat the business “paralysis induced by the protests” was “having a huge impact on the creaking economy” of Egypt.  As Finance Minister Samir Radwin said two weeks into the uprising, the economic situation was “very serious” and that “the longer the stalemate continues, the more damaging it is.”

From their inception, the huge protests threatened the billions of dollars that the leaders and chief beneficiaries of the Mubarak regime had acquired during their 30 year reign of terror, corruption, and accumulation.  To the generals in particular, it was surely apparent that the massive acts of brutality necessary to suppress the uprising would have caused perhaps irreparable harm, threatening its vast economic interests. In other words, either trying to outwait the revolutionaries or imposing the Tiananmen solution risked the downfall of the economic empires of Egypt’s ruling groups.

But why would either of those responses destroy the economy?

Squeezing the Life Out of the Mubarak Regime

Put simply, from the beginning, the Egyptian uprising had the effect of a general strike.  Starting on January 25th, the first day of the protest, tourism -- the largest industry in the country, which had just begun its high season -- went into free fall.  After two weeks, the industry had simply “ground to a halt,”leaving a significant portion of the two million workers it supported with reduced wages or none at all, and the few remaining tourists rattling around empty hotels, catching the pyramids, if at all, on television.

Since pyramids and other Egyptian sites attract more than a million visitors a month and account for at least 5% of the Egyptian economy, tourism alone (given the standard multiplier effect) may account for over 15% of the country’s cash flow. Not surprisingly, then, news reports soon began mentioning revenue losses of up to $310 million per day. In an economy with an annual gross domestic product (GDP) of well over $200 billion, each day that Mubarak clung to office produced a tangible and growing decline in it.  After two weeks of this ticking time bomb, Crédit Agricole, the largest banking group in France, lowered its growth estimate for the country’s economy by 32%.

The initial devastating losses in the tourist, hotel, and travel sectors of the Egyptian economy hit industries dominated by huge multinational corporations and major Egyptian business groups dependent on a constant flow of revenues.  When cash flow dies, loan payments must still be made, hotels heated, airline schedules kept, and many employees, especially executives, paid.  In such a situation, losses start mounting fast, and even the largest companies can face a crisis quickly. The situation was especially ominous because it was known that skittish travelers would be unlikely to return until they were confident that no further disruptions would occur.

The largest of businesses, local and multinational, are not normally prone to inactivity.  They are the ones likely to move most quickly to stem a tide of red ink by agitating the government to suppress such a protest, hopefully yesterday. But the staggering size of even the early demonstrations, the face of a mobilizing civil society visibly shedding 30 years of passivity, proved stunning.  The fiercely brave response to police attacks, in which repression was met by masses of new demonstrators pouring into the streets, made it clear that brutal suppression would not quickly silence these protests.  Such acts were more likely to prolong the disruptions and possibly amplify the uprising.

Even if Washington was slow on the uptake, it didn’t take long for the relentlessly repressive Egyptian ruling clique to grasp the fact that large-scale, violent suppression was an impossible-to-implement strategy.  Once the demonstrations involved hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Egyptians, a huge and bloody suppression guaranteed long-term economic paralysis and ensured that the tourist trade wasn’t going to rebound for months or longer.

The paralysis of the tourism industry was, in itself, an economic time bomb that threatened the viability of the core of the Egyptian capitalist class, as long as the demonstrations continued.  Recovery could only begin after a “return to normal life,” a phrase that became synonymous with the end of the protests in the rhetoric of the government, the military, and the mainstream media. With so many fortunes at stake, the business classes, foreign and domestic, soon enough began entertaining the most obvious and least disruptive solution:Mubarak’s departure.

Strangling the Mubarak Regime

The attack on tourism, however, was just the first blow in what rapidly became the protestors’ true weapon of mass disruption, its increasing stranglehold on the economy. The crucial communications and transportation industries were quickly engulfed in chaos and disrupted by the demonstrations.  The government at first shut down the Internet and mobile phone service in an effort to deny the protestors their means of communication and organization, including Facebook and Twitter.  When they were reopened, these services operated imperfectly, in part because of the increasingly rebellious behavior of their own employees.

Similar effects were seen in transportation, which became unreliable and sporadic, either because of government shutdowns aimed at crippling the protests or because the protests interfered with normal operations.  And such disruptions quickly rippled outward to the many sectors of the economy, from banking to foreign trade, for which communication and/or transportation was crucial.

As the demonstrations grew, employees, customers, and suppliers of various businesses were ever more consumed with preparations for, participation in, or recovery from the latest protest, or protecting homes from looters and criminals after the government called the police force off the streets.  On Fridays especially, many people left work to join the protest during noon prayers, abandoning their offices as the country immersed itself in the next big demonstration -- and then the one after.

As long as the protests were sustained, as long as each new crescendo matched or exceeded the last, the economy continued to die while business and political elites became ever more desperate for a solution to the crisis.

The Rats Leave the Sinking Ship of State

After each upsurge in protest, Mubarak and his cronies offered new concessions aimed at quieting the crowds.  These, in turn, were taken as signs of weakness by the protestors, only convincing them of their strength, amplifying the movement, and driving it into the heart of the Egyptian working class and the various professional guilds.  By the start of the third week of demonstrations, protests began to hit critical institutions directly.

On February 9th, reports of a widening wave of strikes in major industries around the country began pouring in, as lawyers, medical workers, and other professionals also took to the streets with their grievances.  In a single day, tens of thousands of employees in textile factories, newspapers and other media companies, government agencies (including the post office), sanitation workers and bus drivers, and -- most significant of all -- workers at the Suez Canal began demanding economic concessions as well as the departure of Mubarak.

Since the Suez Canal is second only to tourism as a source of income for the country, a sit-in there, involving up to 6,000 workers, was particularly ominous.  Though the protestors made no effort to close the canal, the threat to its operation was self-evident.

A shutdown of the canal would have been not just an Egyptian but a world calamity: a significant proportion of the globe’s oil flows through that canal, especially critical for energy-starved Europe.  A substantial shipping slowdown, no less a shutdown, threatened a possible renewal of the worldwide recession of 2008-2009, even as it would choke off the Egyptian government’s major source of steady income.

As if this weren’t enough, the demonstrators turned their attention to various government institutions, attempting to render them “nonfunctional.” The day after the president’s third refusal to step down, protestors claimed that many regional capitals, including Suez, Mahalla, Mansoura, Ismailia, Port Said, and even Alexandria (the country’s major Mediterranean port), were “free of the regime” -- purged of Mubarak officials, state-controlled communications, and the hated police and security forces.  In Cairo, the national capital, demonstrators began to surround the parliament, the state TV building, and other centers critical to the national government.  Alaa Abd El Fattah, an activist and well known political blogger in Cairo, told Democracy Now that the crowd “could continue to escalate, either by claiming more places or by actually moving inside these buildings, if the need comes.” With the economy choking to death, the demonstrators were now moving to put a hammerlock on the government apparatus itself.

At that point, a rats-leaving-a-sinking-ship-of-state phenomenon burst into public visibility as “several large companies took out adverts in local newspapers putting distance between themselves and the regime.”  Guardianreporter Jack Shenker affirmed this public display by quoting informed sources describing widespread “nervousness among the business community” about the viability of the regime, and that “a lot of people you might think are in bed with Mubarak have privately lost patience.”

It was this tightening noose around the neck of the Mubarak regime that made the remarkable protests of these last weeks so different from those in Tiananmen Square.  In China, the demonstrators had negligible economic and political leverage.  In Egypt, the option of a brutal military attack, even if “successful” in driving them off the streets, seemed to all but guarantee the deepening of an already dire economic crisis, subjecting ever widening realms of the economy -- and so the wealth of the military -- to the risk of irreparable calamity.

Perhaps Mubarak would have been willing to sacrifice all this to stay in power.  As it happened, a growing crew of movers and shakers, including the military leadership, major businessmen, foreign investors, and interested foreign governments saw a far more appealing alternative solution.

Weil Ziada, head of research for a major Egyptian financial firm, spoke for the business and political class when he told Guardian reporter Jack Shenker on February 11th:

"Anti-government sentiment is not calming down, it is gaining momentum…This latest wave is putting a lot more pressure on not just the government but the entire regime; protesters have made their demands clear and there's no rowing back now. Everything is going down one route. There are two or three scenarios, but all involve the same thing: Mubarak stepping down -- and the business community is adjusting its expectations accordingly."

The next day, President Hosni Mubarak resigned and left Cairo.

President Obama, remember this lesson: If you want to avoid future foreign policy Obaminations, be aware that nonviolent protest has the potential to strangle even the most brutal regime, if it can definitively threaten the viability of its core industries. In these circumstances, a mass movement equipped with fearsome weapons of mass disruption can topple a tyrant equipped with fearsome weapons of mass destruction.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In Dhading province in central Nepal, most people are farmers, who depend on rain-fed agriculture for food and income. But erratic rainfall and natural disasters in recent years, including widespread drought and recurring landslides, are threatening the livelihoods of the region’s farming communities.

Resource Identification and Management Society (RIMS)-Nepal, a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable management of natural resources through local capacity-building, has organized a pilot project called the Community Seed and Information Resource Center (CSIRC).

The CSIRC initiative is empowering small-scale farmers with the tools they need to adapt to climate change. Established in November 2010, the CSIRC is organized, managed, and staffed by the village development committee (VDC) of Tasarpu, under the Local Adaptation Plan of Action (LAPA) program.

After conducting a survey to identify the most vulnerable households in the province, the program is providing subsidies for improved seeds to some 160 farmers.

The CSIRC’s decentralized model allows farmers to pool their resources together, ensuring better adaptation to climate change for the entire community. At the center, community members share knowledge about how to put their new inputs to be better use. The CSIRC serves as an important village resource – it allows farmers to collectively discuss the challenges they face and share practices to better manage natural resources.

And the program’s executive committee is also working to integrate the CSIRC within national agriculture networks. One such network is the Telecenters website, an online platform that provides rural farmers with timely information on markets, prices, and weather in English and Nepali.

In remote rural areas, improved access to information about prices for various crops at markets is helping farmers negotiate with buyers or decide which markets to bring their products to. These innovative information sharing networks bridge the gap by enabling farmers to access market information without leaving their farms. And, frequent weather updates are also helping farmers plan ahead and make more informed decisions about planting their crops.

With the help of these resources, farmers in Dhading province are now supplying crops to the nearby Kathmandu Valley, where demand for their products is steadily growing.

Small-scale farmers produce 70 percent of the food consumed in the world today. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by 2080, climate change could leave an additional 600 million people hungry. And a majority of those at risk are the world’s small-scale farmers. Improving the capacity of these farmers and strengthening resilience of local food systems is becoming more important than ever.

The CSIRC is doing just that – it is providing farmers with the valuable tools they need to avoid losses to changing weather, and raise crops that nourish their families and communities.

To learn more about building resilience to climate change and improving farmers’ access to inputs and information, see: Improving Water Access in India, One Drip at a Time, FAO Seed Distribution and the Biopiracy Controversy, Local Seeds to Meet Smallscale Farmers’, Everyone Plays a Role, Improving African Women’s Access to Agriculture Training Programs, Providing Seeds to Improve Food Security in Burkina Faso, Turning the Threat of Climate Change into an Opportunity to Build a More Sustainable Future, and Texting on the Farm: Mobile Technology Provides Farmers with Useful Information in India.

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For two decades now we've been ignoring the impassioned pleas of scientists that our burning of fossil fuels was a bad idea. And now we're paying a heavy price.

If you were in the space shuttle looking down yesterday, you would have seen a pair of truly awesome, even fearful, sights.

Much of North America was obscured by a 2,000-mile storm dumping vast quantities of snow from Texas to Maine--between the wind and snow, forecasters described it as "probably the worst snowstorm ever to affect" Chicago, and said waves as high as 25 feet were rocking buoys on Lake Michigan.

Meanwhile, along the shore of Queensland in Australia, the vast cyclone Yasi was sweeping ashore; though the storm hit at low tide, the country's weather service warned that "the impact is likely to be more life threatening than any experienced during recent generations," especially since its torrential rains are now falling on ground already flooded from earlier storms. Here's how Queensland premier Anna Bligh addressed her people before the storm hit: "We know that the long hours ahead of you are going to be the hardest that you face. We will be thinking of you every minute of every hour between now and daylight and we hope that you can feel our thoughts, that you will take strength from the fact that we are keeping you close and in our hearts."

Welcome to our planet, circa 2011--a planet that, like some unruly adolescent, has decided to test the boundaries. For two centuries now we've been burning coal and oil and gas and thus pouring carbon into the atmosphere; for two decades now we've been ignoring the increasingly impassioned pleas of scientists that this is a Bad Idea. And now we're getting pinched.

Oh, there have been snowstorms before, and cyclones--our planet has always produced extreme events. But by definition extreme events are supposed to be rare, and all of a sudden they're not. In 2010 nineteen nations set new all-time temperature records (itself a record!) and when the mercury hit 128 in early June along the Indus, the entire continent of Asia set a new all-time temperature mark. Russia caught on fire; Pakistan drowned. Munich Re, the biggest insurance company on earth, summed up the annus horribilis last month with this clinical phrase: "the high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change."

You don't need a PhD to understand what's happening. That carbon we've poured into the air traps more of the sun's heat near the planet. And that extra energy expresses itself in a thousand ways, from melting ice to powering storms. Since warm air can hold more water vapor than cold, it's not surprising that the atmosphere is 4% moister than it was 40 years ago. That "4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms," said Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the government's National Center for Atmospheric Research. It loads the dice for record rain and snow. Yesterday the Midwest and Queensland crapped out.

The point I'm trying to make is: chemistry and physics work. We don't just live in a suburb, or in a free-market democracy; we live on an earth that has certain rules. Physics and chemistry don't care what John Boehner thinks, they're unmoved by what will make Barack Obama's re-election easier. More carbon means more heat means more trouble--and the trouble has barely begun. So far we've raised the temperature of the planet about a degree, which has been enough to melt the Arctic. The consensus prediction for the century is that without dramatic action to stem the use of fossil fuel--far more quickly than is politically or economically convenient--we'll see temperatures climb five degrees this century. Given that one degree melts the Arctic, just how lucky are we feeling?

So far, of course, we haven't taken that dramatic action--just the opposite. The president didn't even mention global warming in his State of the Union address. He did promise some research into new technologies, which will help down the line--but we'll only be in a position to make use of it if we get started right now with the technology we've already got. And that requires, above all, putting a serious price on carbon. We use fossil fuel because it's cheap, and it's cheap because Exxon Mobil and Peabody Coal get to use the atmosphere as open sewer to dump their waste for free. And today you can see the results of that particular business model from outer space.

Overcoming that will require a movement--a movement that is slowly beginning to build. In 2008 a few of us started from scratch to build a campaign with an unlikely moniker: we called in 350.org, because a month earlier this particular planet's foremost climatologist, James Hansen, had declared that we now knew how much carbon in the atmosphere was too much. Any value higher than 350 parts per million, he said, was "not compatible with the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." That's troubling news, because right now the atmosphere above Chicago and Cairns and wherever you happen to be is about 390 ppm co2. In other words, too much.

At the time, some of our environmentalist friends said that science was too complicated for most people to get--that the only way to talk about these issues was to simplify them. But we thought people could understand, just as we understand when a doctor tells us our cholesterol is too high. We may not know everything about the lipid system, but we know what 'too high' means--it means we better change our diet, take our pill, lace up our sneakers. And indeed 350.org has now coordinated almost 15,000 demonstrations in 188 countries, what Foreign Policy magazine called 'the largest ever coordinated global rally" about any issue.

That's just a start, of course, and so far not enough to counter the power of the fossil fuel industry, the most profitable enterprise humans have ever engaged in. So we'll keep building, and hoping others will join us. But the good news is simple: more and more of this planet's inhabitants are remembering that they actually live on a planet.

We've been able to forget that fact for the last ten thousand years, the period of remarkable climatic stability that underwrote the rise of civilization. But we won't be able to forget it much longer. Days like yesterday will keep slapping us upside the head, until we take it in. The third rock from the sun is a very different place than it used to be.

 

A groundbreaking Population report (Wed 12 January) by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) has revealed the world is hurtling towards population overload placing billions at risk of hunger, thirst and slum conditions.

Population: One planet, too many people? is the first report of its kind by the engineering profession. Unless the engineering solutions highlighted in the report are urgently implemented then the projected 2.5 billion more people on earth by the end of this Century (currently there is 6.9 billion) will crush the earth’s resources.

Urbanisation will soar. ‘Mega-cities’ of more than 10 million people will rise to 29 by 2025 and the urban population will increase from 3.3 billion (2007) to 6.4 billion (2050). Food will also become an increasingly precious commodity and developed areas such as the UK will be forced to stamp out its ‘throwaway’ lifestyle. Water consumption will increase by 30% by 2030 and there is projected to be a 50% hike in water extraction for industrial use in Asia. This, the report states, could create civil unrest and land battles for resources as climate change looms.

Unless the engineering solutions recommended throughout the report are brought in now, there could be devastating consequences not only for developing nations – but right on our own doorstep. “The challenge is how to apply engineering knowledge, expertise and skills around the world to build a new sustainable future.” (p16)

“To have the public knowledgeable about it (the report) is crucial. Political actors in every country should bring this to the attention of their government. Societal infrastructure cannot keep up, in fact it is crumbling,” said Dr John Bongaarts, Vice President of the Population Council in New York. He worked along with Dr Fox and a 70-strong delegation of engineers around the world to compile the research.

Energy, food, water, urbanisation and finance are the five areas which will be significantly affected by the effects of population growth. These are dubbed Engineering Development Goals (EDG) and should be the next step for the UN’s Millennium Goals (MDG), the report says.

Lead Author, Dr Tim Fox, Head of Energy, Environment and Climate Change at IMechE, said: "In less than four years, the MDGs will expire and to date there is nothing, except the recommendations in our report, to replace them."

“Population increase will be the defining challenge of 21st Century, a global issue that will affect us all no matter where we live. Britain is in a currently in a prime position where it has, at its fingertips, some of the most groundbreaking engineering solutions in the world – and the brightest and most educated engineers. We need to work right now with the Department For International Development to set up a knowledge ‘swap-shop’ of engineering skills with other countries. This is not altruism. This is self defence."

"Up to 1 billion people could be displaced by climate change over the next 40 years and we are likely to see an increase in unrest as resource shortages become clear. The term Nimbyism will become obsolete. No-one’s back yard will be immune from these effects."

From the Executive Summary:

Increasing Pressure

The human population of the world is undergoing unprecedented growth and demographic change. By the end of this century there will be an estimated 9.5 billion people, 75% of them located in urban settlements and striving for increased living standards. Meeting the needs and demands of these people will provide a significant challenge to governments and society at large, and the engineering profession in particular.

In rising to this challenge, the engineers of today, and the future, will need to be innovative in the application of sustainable solutions and increasingly engaged with the human factors that influence their decisions. They will need strong, visionary and stable support from governments around the world.

There are four main areas in which population growth and expanding affluence will significantly challenge society in the provision of basic human needs, and create increased pressure on current resources and the environment:

1. Food: An increase in the number of mouths to feed and changes in dietary habits, including the increased consumption of meat, will double demand for agricultural production by 2050. This will place added pressures on already stretched resources coping with the uncertain impacts of climate change on global food production.

2. Water: Extra pressure will come not only from increased requirements for food production, which uses 70% of water consumed globally, but also from a growth in demand for drinking water and industrial processing as we strive to satisfy consumer aspirations. Worldwide demand for water is projected to rise 30% by 2030, this in a world of shifting rainfall patterns due to global warming-induced climate changes that are difficult to predict.

3. Urbanisation: With cities in the developing world expanding at an unprecedented rate, adding another three billion urban inhabitants by 2050, solutions are needed to relieve the pressures of overcrowding, sanitation, waste handling and transportation if we are to provide comfortable, resilient and efficient places for all to live and work.

4. Energy: Increased food production, water processing and urbanisation, combined with economic growth and expanding affluence, will by mid-century more than double the demand on the sourcing and distribution of energy.

This at a time when the sector is already under increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (on average across the globe to 50% of 1990 levels), adapt to uncertain future impacts of a changing climate and ensure security of future supply.

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers recognises the scale of these issues and that there is a need to begin implementing the early phases of routes to sustainable solutions. The long timescales involved in many of the engineering-based projects required to meet these challenges, often measured in decades of construction and implementation, mean that if action is not taken before a crisis point is reached there will be significant human hardship. Failure to act will place billions of people around the world at risk of hunger, thirst and conflict as capacity tries to catch up with demand.

...The Five Engineering Development Goals
As we progress towards the UN’s Millennium Development Goals completion date of 2015, to achieve a successful outcome in meeting future population growth and demographic change, governments across the globe should strive to adopt the following five engineering-focused development goals:

1. Energy: Use existing sustainable energy technologies and reduce energy waste. Access to abundant sources of energy and affordable techniques for its use and distribution, coupled with reducing the environmental impact of fossil fuel consumption, are essential for meeting the challenges of population growth and changing demographics in the 21st century.

Rather than waiting for development of new techniques with long and costly paths to commercial maturity, we must urgently focus our prime effort on correcting market failures to drive the deployment of the clean technologies known today. Furthermore, we must prioritise research funding to accelerate demonstration of those close to exploitation.

Energy policy in both developed and developing nations must encourage consumption to move downwards and reduce demand, through a combination of engineering and behaviour change. The deployment of energy management technologies, such as intelligent appliances and smart meters, together with reductions in waste through better-insulated buildings and effective use of heat, are examples of engineering initiatives that should be pursued in this regard. Priority must be taken in newly developing countries to engineer many of these approaches from the start, therefore ensuring that the fastest-growing populations in the world leapfrog over the unsustainable failings of the wasteful energy solutions embedded in the infrastructure of mature, industrialised nations such as the UK.

2. Water: Replenish groundwater sources, improve storage of excess water and increase energy efficiencies of desalination. If there is one common factor that can be seen in the issues relating to water around the world, it is the unsustainable abstraction of groundwater at a higher rate than natural replenishment allows. This is a major issue due to the importance of groundwater as a source.

Governments must improve groundwater management and accelerate the adoption of Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) techniques, where water is re-introduced into the aquifer either by the use of wells or by altering conditions to increase natural infiltration. The source of the re-introduced water can be treated wastewater, storm-water or rainfall. Currently most ASR projects are within the developed nations and efforts need to be made to both substantially extend its use and increase its uptake among suitable regions of developing nations.

Where and when water supply exceeds demand, such as in heavy rain activity, too little effort is placed on capturing and storing that excess supply for use as a source in drier times. Governments must provide separate sewerage and storm-water systems to allow the excess to be stored at the domestic and community level and used for domestic and commercial washing functions, lavatory flushing etc. In the developing world this approach should be taken from the outset, with provision for rainfall harvesting, aquifer replenishment and other forms of storage. In the developed world this means moving away from a culture that delivers water at a very high purity regardless of its intended use, and considers all wastewater to be highly contaminated.

In the past few decades we have significantly reduced the cost of desalination and increased its energy efficiency. However, it still remains one of the most expensive water supply options and is generally restricted to energy-rich nations. We must prioritise and accelerate research into reducing the cost of this technology, in terms of both energy and money, so that wider deployment can be realised at coastal and estuarine locations of rapidly growing populations in the South.

3. Food: Reduce food waste and resolve the politics of hunger. On average a staggering 25% of all fresh food is thrown away in the North after being purchased. In the South, post-harvest crop losses are as much as half of the entire production. If we are to feed the rapidly growing populations of the South, the huge potential for gains in this area must be made. For the nations of the North, substantial efficiency increases are possible from the consumer, largely through behavioural change that recognises the value of food. By contrast, in the South the challenge is that of implementing existing engineering solutions and techniques, many of which are relatively low-tech, to improve food handling, correct poor storage facilities and rectify inadequate management practice.

Malnutrition and undernutrition remain widespread in the poorest countries, despite significant levels of food waste and our technical capability to increase production further. Having the scientific and engineering capacity to produce enough food to feed the world’s growing population does not necessarily mean there will be no hunger. The politics and social issues of poverty, which results in lack of access for many, must be tackled if we are to successfully feed a larger number of people.

4. Urbanisation: Meet the challenge of slums and defending against sea-level rises. Of all the issues faced globally by urban-dwellers, both now and in the future, the most prevalent and pressing is that of informal housing areas in the developing world. Non-permanent structures account for 18% of all urban housing units, and one third of the world’s urban population live in appalling slum conditions with little or no access to clean water, sanitation or energy infrastructure. In dealing with this issue, society must recognise slums are a home and workplace to the people who live there.

It is not an engineering solution of decant-demolish-rebuild-return. Interventions need to recognise the established informal economy and neighbourhood values of the inhabitants, and be planned, decided and implemented in association with them.

Opportunities to build cities from scratch are few and far between, meaning that the expanding urban populations in the 21st century will be largely concentrated around existing sites. For historical reasons, many cities of the world are located in low-lying coastal areas and their people must be protected against the threat of extensive flooding from future sea-level rise related to global warming. Three quarters of the world’s large cities are on the coast and some of the biggest are based on deltaic plains in developing countries (such as Bangkok and Shanghai) where land subsidence will exacerbate the challenge. Given the long timescales that will be involved in agreeing and implementing strategies, such as engineered flood defence infrastructure or abandonment to the sea of areas currently occupied, assessment of the projected rises and potential solutions needs urgent attention in all coastal settlements around the world.

5. Finance: Empower communities and enable implementation. Within the newly developing economies of the South, where the greatest population growth will be experienced, the scale of infrastructure investment required to create energy, water and food sourcing and distribution networks similar to those in the developed world will likely be prohibitive. Local application of mature, understood clean engineering technologies will need to be incentivised. If significant levels of access to energy and water are to be realised and adoption of localised sustainable technologies encouraged, mechanisms such as innovative soft loans and micro-financing, ‘zero-cost’ transition packages and new models of personal and community ownership, such as trusts, must be put in place to reduce the capital investment.

Similarly, in the urban environment one of the most proven routes to success in the redevelopment of slum areas is the inclusion of the inhabitants in the decision-making and planning process. Instead of direct intervention by local or regional government, innovative programmes must channel infrastructure financing and housing loans direct to poor communities, who plan and carry out improvements, thus handing the communities a central role. Programmes in this style also have the benefit of altering the relationships between the community leaders and the administration of the cities, instilling confidence in the urban poor groups that they can influence solutions.
Editorial Notes

related news item: Harrabin's Notes: Population overload

Recently I've been thinking about world population again. Here are some of the things that have come up.

The first thought is that "we" (as in the aggregate species h. Sap) are not rational creatures. We are instead rationalizing creatures who make most of our decisions unconsciously, based on a stew of emotions and heuristics drawn from our previous experience. When a decision emerges fully formed into our conscious mind we then dress it up with post-facto justifications designed to preserve the precious illusion of our rationality. We do show some signs of rationality on an individual level, but these signs are generally submerged by herding behaviours as our numbers increase.

The point of this observation is that it seems vanishingly unlikely that we ever consciously plan our cultural environment. Our collective experience, expressed as culture and civilization, is probably better understood as a self-organizing, complex adaptive system. When seen in that light it seems clear that we do not deliberately plan many of its overarching qualities. Instead, they arise on their own out of the incredible complexity of 6.8 billion people each following their individual paths of least resistance to various local minima in the cultural fitness landscape.

As a result, the notion that we might ever design a rationally structured future based on reason, logic and the projection of observed trends is a chimera. I can see two reasons why people might object to any attempt to implement such a vision. The first is that such a clean, orderly vision has too many unpleasant authoritarian resonances for most people. The second is that asking anyone to do anything that deviates from their path of least resistance from one local minimum to the next is doomed to failure because of our herding instincts.

The next thought I'd like to throw in is that population really can't be separated from activity. A civilization that preserves all that we have come to define as such would have to be limited to a virtual handful of people if overshoot is to be avoided. So, as much as we would like to take a single-factor, population-only view of the situation, I think it's impossible to effectively separate the "PA" terms of IPAT.

Reducing consumption, when continued consumption is seen as possible (even when its reduction is understood to be necessary), violates that "path of least resistance" principle I wrote about above and will therefore be rejected out of hand by our unconscious decision-making processes. That reaction means that the idea is a political non-starter.

So in the face of this, what do I suggest we do? The mischievous anarchist in me wants to say "Do nothing, just watch. Life has its own imperative and will unfold by its own rules." But on a personal level that is too much abdication even for me. My real preference is to leverage the fact that we seem to be more rational in smaller numbers. Since every decision is at its heart an individual choice, the best approach seems to be to educate, awaken and empower individuals. If a sufficient number of awakened people start acting based on their individual perceptions of "right action" then the complex system will adapt itself in some different directions. In my opinion bottom-up approaches are more likely to "succeed" (whatever that word means in this context) than top-down approaches. It's a nice paradox - if we want to change the direction of our civilization, we need to start with the individual "civis".

Finally, for those who feel compelled to organize social movements to accomplish change, there is one avenue that will be profitable to explore. It has long been known that the more affluent and educated a society is, the lower its birthrate tends to be. This prompted me to do the following analysis, that compares national fertility rates to various other factors: GDP per capita, life expectancy, literacy rates, and the Human Development Index which is a mashup of the other three factors. Here are the scatter plots I obtained:

 

 

 

 

National TFR correlates relatively poorly with GDP/capita (C = 0.47), reasonably well with life expectancy (C = 0.77) and literacy rate (C = 0.78), but very well with HDI (C = 0.89). This implies that if we want to maximize the reduction of TFR we need to concentrate on improving all three dimensions of HDI: Life expectancy (health care), knowledge (literacy and school enrollment) and income.

This approach neatly circumvents the objections to population reduction arguments when applied to the developing world. In this case the effort is put towards development, and reductions in fertility follow as a natural consequence of empowered individual choices as I discussed above.

As a word of caution, it may be very difficult to raise incomes significantly in the developing world, given the increasing degree of wealth consolidation and looming resource limitations that may put the brakes on much economic growth. Fortunately, improving the other two factors does not require high levels of income. So improvements in health and education must be the focus of our efforts.

Can we generate the political will, or any level of global interest in doing this?

It is clear that we (as in humanity, other species and the planet itself) face a potpourri of problems. Most of the ecological issues in the world twine together with human activities like a mating ball of snakes. This note discusses a set of ecological and human problems, and tries to put them into perspective against each other.

At the very top of my list of problems, always, is carbon dioxide which I consider the main villain of the play. CO2, which is produced mainly by burning fossil fuels, contributes heavily to climate change and ocean acidification. The warming aspect of climate change contributes to water shortages and biodiversity loss, while the climatic variability it introduces contributes to food shortages. Ocean acidification also contributes to more biodiversity loss and food shortages.

Energy shortages are likely to contribute to a number of ecological problems, as we’ve already seen with the growth of coal generation around the world. Another risk that will crop up in many places as oil and gas supplies begin to decline is the increasing use of local biomass as fuel. That means burning trees, which leads to deforestation with the loss of carbon sinks (more global warming), loss of habitats (more biodiversity loss) and ground water. Energy shortages will also lead to more development of resources like tar sands and shale gas, resulting in more damage to water supplies and species habitats.

Non-energy resource shortages result in more intensive exploitation of ever more fragile and remote areas of the planet, increasing the pressure on other species.

Pollution of all kinds leads to biodiversity loss in addition to the toxicity risks it poses to humans.

Food shortages have their own ecological impact as people turn to local, non-traditional food sources (aka “eating the songbirds out of the trees”). This increases the pressure on biodiversity due to direct decimation of target species and the disruption of local ecological balances.

How much of this is due to human overpopulation, and how much of it is due to human overactivity? It’s tempting to say that it’s because there are just too damn many of us, but I think that’s a bit too simplistic.

The one set of effects that is unarguably the result of human numbers includes anything to do with eating. Each of us needs the same minimum number of calories per day to survive, and every human mouth that’s added to the planet brings with it a 2500 calorie a day appetite. The spiraling race between population and food supplies increases the pressure on water supplies and biodiversity, as well as contributing to river, ocean and ground water pollution.

Other effects that may appear to be the result of overpopulation – such as resource shortages, energy shortages and industrial pollution – are largely the result of human activity. In fact, the majority of the damage we are doing to the planet is the result of our activity and not our numbers. I say this for a number of reasons:

1. Human population growth is no longer exponential, it's linear. We are adding a constant 80 million people to the planet every year, but this growth is constant, not exponential. Population growth has been approximately constant ever since we left the sheltering umbrella of the Green Revolution in 1980. This simple fact lends great credence to Russ Hopfenberg's theory that food causes people.

2. Humanity is in ecological overshoot already. Our consumption of global biosystem resources is up to 50% greater than the natural workld can support, if WWF and the Global Footprint Network are to be believed. If our population magically stopped growing tonight, if we could cut our growth by 80 million people a year right now, we would still be in overshoot. We are simply consuming too much for the planet's safety.

3. The half of the world's births that occur in nations with the highest ecological footprints consume three times as much of the world's resources as the half that occurs in the nations with the lowest ecological footprints.

4. If the Ecological Footprint is a good measure of sustainability (and I think it is) the world could comfortably support its current population in perpetuity at the living standard of Vietnam. If we each had the same ecological footprint as the average Indian the earth could sustainably support over twice as many people as it does today.

5. The problem is that we don't have the ecological footprint of India. The world average is more on a par with Costa Rica or Turkey, with industrialized nations consuming 5 to 10 times the sustainable biocapacity. The 2 billion people that lead unsustainable lives in developed nations consume as much of the planet's biocapacity as the 5 billion who lead sustainable lives in countries where the average ecological footprint is below a sustainable 1.8 global hectares.

So while our population numbers are definitely a problem, our consumption represents a much bigger one. Yes, there are probably too many people, but it’s our consumption, not our numbers, that is wrecking the planet.

While I recognize that others are of a very different opinion, nuclear issues - whether they are proliferation, waste storage, radiation releases or even outright warfare - seem almost insignificant to me. The ecological threats I talked about above are global in scope, are happening as we speak and are accelerating in severity with every passing year. The significance of localized issues like nuclear waste storage, or the risks posed by proliferation seems almost picayune in comparison.

But this is just my take on it. As I’ve said before, we need to have everyone who is moved by the predicament working on whatever issues are most important to them, in whatever way they feel is appropriate. We never know what the pivotal problem may turn out to be, or where an essential answer might be found.

Rather than moaning with despair as the ship goes down though, why not choose to dance? Who knows what might happen if enough of us made that choice?

“Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some men die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live;”

Stringfellow Barr Citizens of the World (1952)

In its most recent January 2011 analysis of the world food situation, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) noted with alarm the extreme price fluctuation in global agricultural markets. This fluctuation in global agricultural markets is leading to higher food prices and is a threat to world food security. The impact falls heaviest on the poor who spend a high percentage — up to 70 percent — of their income on food. Often, the lack of dietary diversification aggravates the problem, as price increases in one staple cannot easily be compensated by switching to other foods. The United Nations estimates that one billion people worldwide do not get enough food and that this number is certain to increase as prices rise.

In a response to the FAO analysis, Rene Wadlow, Senior Vice President and Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens (AWC) addressed an urgent appeal to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon on behalf of the AWC. Wadlow recalled the earlier World Bank evaluation that “The development community, and the world as a whole, has constantly failed to address malnutrition over the past decades. (World Bank. Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development: A Strategy For Large-Scale Action (2006) )

A central theme which citizens of the world have long stressed is that there needs to be a world food policy and that a world food policy is more than the sum of national food security programs. Food security has too often been treated as a collection of national security initiatives. While the adoption of a national strategy to ensure food and nutrition security for all is essential, a focus on the formulation of national plans is clearly inadequate. There is a need for a world plan of action with focused attention to the role that the United Nations and regional bodies such as the European Union and the African Union must play if hunger is to be sharply reduced.

It is also certain that attention must be given to local issues of food production, distribution and food security. Attention needs to be given to cultural factors, the division of labor between women and men in agriculture and rural development, in marketing local food products, to the role of small farmers, to the role of landless agricultural labor, and to land-holding patterns.

However, for the formulation of a dynamic world food policy, world economic trends and structures need to be analysed, and policy goals made clear. There needs to be a detailed analysis of the role of speculation in the rise of commodity prices. Banks and hedge funds, having lost money in the real estate mortgage packages, are now investing massively in commodities. For the moment, there is little governmental regulation of this speculation. There needs to be an analysis of these financial flows and their impact on the price of grains.

The politically-destabilizing aspects of higher food prices and food riots had pushed the issue of food costs to the top of the agenda of UN Agencies in 2008 as highlighted by the Seventh special session on the Right to Food of the Human Rights Council in May 2008. However, the financial crisis and general recession of 2009 and 2010 have eclipsed food issues, and many governments have again become complacent, believing that the food security mechanisms that they had put into place permanently banished the dangers of large-scale unrest due to higher food prices.

Today, the FAO analysis is a call for cooperation among the UN family of agencies, national governments, non-governmental organizations and the millions of food producers to respond to both short-term measures to help people now suffering from lack of food and adequate nutrition due to high food prices and with longer-range structural issues. The world requires a World Food Policy and a clear Plan of Action.

There is little apparent relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates at the regional, state, or county level.

In response to a recent Roll Call article calling out the nativist lobby, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith wrote a letter to the editor making a series of claims -- many of which he’s been making for the last 20 years -- which simply don’t stack up to the facts. These myths also conveniently obsure the lack of any denial of ties to the nativist lobby. While many of Smith’s easy-to-swallow myths may stir the extreme end of a conservative base, they serve as a yet another distraction from having an open and honest immigration debate.

Repeating the same myths over and over again doesn’t make them true. Here are a few recently cited immigration myths and the facts that refute them:

MYTH: The American people want enforcement-only “solutions.”

FACT: Voters still strongly support comprehensive immigration reform. According to a November 2010 nationwide poll, support for comprehensive immigration reform is broad-based and crosses party lines. When comprehensive immigration reform was described to voters, 81% of voters supported the measure. Republicans were the most intense supporters, with fully 72% strongly supporting comprehensive reform. Additionally, 76% (62% strongly) agree with the statement that “deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States is unrealistic.”

MYTH: We could make jobs available for citizens and legal immigrants if we simply enforced our current immigration laws.

FACT: Although it might seem that deporting all unauthorized immigrant workers from the labor force would automatically improve job prospects for unemployed Americans, the fact is that employment is not a “zero sum” game. Mass deportation would actually reduce U.S. GDP by 1.46% annually, amounting to a $2.6 trillion cumulative loss in GDP over 10 years, and cost an estimated $206 billion to $230 billion over 5 years. The notion that unemployed natives could simply be “swapped” for employed unauthorized immigrants is not valid economically. There is little apparent relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates at the regional, state, or county level.

MYTH: The granting of automatic citizenship to the children of foreigners comes from a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment. The framers never sought to guarantee citizenship to children of illegal immigrants. During the debate in 1866, the Senator who authored the 14th Amendment said it would “not of course include persons born in the United States who are foreigners.”

FACT: The framers intended to end discriminatory definitions of citizenship that create a permanent underclass. The quotation is taken out of context, and reaffirms birthright citizenship when read in full:

“Every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States. This has long been a great desideratum in the jurisprudence and legislation of this country.”

In other words, the terms “foreigners” and “aliens” are used to describe those “who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States.” Constitutional citizenship as enshrined in the 14th Amendment and affirmed several times by the U.S. Supreme Court, was intended to ensure that all those born on U.S. soil are treated equally with rights of citizenship, and no state or national legislature may re-define citizenship to exclude certain groups of people.

These are just a few examples of how dangerous myths can be and why facts do and should matter in the larger immigration debate. The truth is that until we focus on policy reforms that improve our immigration system in an honest, fair and effective way instead of disseminating myths and misinformation that divide us, we are destined to keep spinning our wheels with no real improvements to our system.

8020vision.com

Google Trends tells me that starting in 2008 the monthly number of news stories on population doubled. Most of the stories like to talk about how global population will expand by 30%, peaking at about 9.1 billion people by around 2050. Though 2050 is a nice round number, and a convenient mid-century marker, one can be lulled in to feeling like it’s a problem that is 40 years off. Not so. The population problem is here and now. And it’s not just about the number of people on the planet, but how those people consume resources. Let’s take a look at the pertinent trends.
Energy and Population

The rate of population growth has a strong correlation with the effectiveness of the dominant fuel source at any given point in history. As the chart below shows, wood was the dominant fuel until coal came on the scene in the 1600s. The population growth rate increased modestly with the proliferation of coal. But the real exponential growth began with the discovery and exploitation of crude oil. Crude oil production is peaking and the world is in the early stages of a transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

China, Brazil and India – Chasing the American Dream

As the population has grown, per capita income and consumption have grown. The most dramatic growth has been in the developing countries of China, Brazil and India. Let’s take a look at the trends in energy use and per capita income relative to some of the leading developed nations. Using GapMinder’s Trendalyzer with energy consumption data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2010 and income data from the IMF, we can see some powerful trends unfolding (N.B. data presented for 1965 through 2008, 1 year steps, circle area proportional to population size, energy use in tonnes of oil equivalent):

>>China, Brazil, and India all show steadily increasing per capita income, with China having the biggest change – outperforming India and Brazil more than 2 to 1.

>> Though US per capita energy consumption is substantially larger than China, Brazil or India, growth has been flat. This comes from conservation initiatives (efficient lighting, insulation, etc.). We must do better.

>> China, Brazil, and India’s energy consumption is growing quickly as they move toward American patterns of consumption. The trend is strong and steady, with no signs of slowing.

(click for larger image)

Less Is The New More

Though Americans represent only 5% of the world’s population, we are consuming about 24% of worlds energy. We are similarly voracious consumers of water, food, land, etc. Citizens in developing nations aspire to live the American lifestyle. Fareed Zakaria refers to this as the “rise of the rest” in his book A Post American World. But the world has only so much to give. Much of what we consume is not renewable. We are bumping up against the limits of earth’s ability to provide for us. As the population expands, for developing nations, their historically meager slice of the pie will expand. For developed nations, their slice of the pie must contract.

Our Ecological Footprint

Using ecological footprint data from Global Footprint Network we can see the current state of consumption for North America and the rest of the world (N.B. width of bar proportional to population in associated region).

N.B. Ecological Footprint accounts estimate how many Earths were needed to meet the resource requirements of humanity for each year since 1961, when complete UN statistics became available. Resource demand (Ecological Footprint) for the world as a whole is the product of population times per capita consumption, and reflects both the level of consumption and the efficiency with which resources are turned into consumption products. Resource supply (biocapacity) varies each year with ecosystem management, agricultural practices (such as fertilizer use and irrigation), ecosystem degradation, and weather. This global assessment shows how the size of the human enterprise compared to the biosphere, and to what extent humanity is in ecological overshoot. Overshoot is possible in the short-term because humanity can liquidate its ecological capital rather than living off annual yields.

Carrying Capacity

The last sentence of the note above is important. The developed nations are already consuming beyond the earths capacity to provide. Carrying Capacity has been exceeded and as it is exceeded, Carrying Capacity declines. While developed nations are making headway improving conservation, there has been little reduction of consumption – we have simply slowed the rate of per capita consumption. Meanwhile developing nations are moving up the consumption curve, aiming for an American-class lifestyle. Depletion of earth’s precious resources accelerates – oil, potable water, wild fish, species, clean air, etc. are all in decline. Earth’s Carrying Capacity is thought to be somewhere between 1 and 3 billion people. We have been operating the planet well beyond that for almost 50 years now.

Even if the population stopped growing today, we are consuming beyond the earth’s capacity to provide. With 6.8 billion people already on the planet, the growth of consumption is the population problem, right now.

Zacharia suggests “As each country rises up, they become more self confident and nationalistic, and less inclined to cooperate in global unity toward a common goal of tackling the pressing problems of this century.”

And quoting Hamlet: “There’s the rub.”

>>Population has grown beyond the Carrying Capacity of the earth.
>> Increasing demand for critical resources (energy, water, food, land, …) reduces Carrying Capacity further, and accelerates decline exponentially.
>> Climate is changing, pollution growing, species extinction accelerating.
>> And our ability to work cooperatively to meet these challenges is failing.

This is not sustainable.

How do we break the vicious spiral? How can our global economy – grown soft and pudgy during the 20th century’s age of abundance – adapt and function in the lean and mean dog days of the 21st century?

Sometime in the latter half of this year, the world population will hit a new milestone: 7 billion people. Already? Didn't we just hit 6 billion? Yep, a mere dozen years ago -- and that's probably the last time you heard much about population. It takes a big, round number with lots of zeroes to get MSM attention.

So in 2011, expect to hear the P word a lot more than you did in 2010, and a lot more than you will in 2012. National Geographic is kicking off the action with a cover story and photo essay.

It's projected to take us slightly longer to get to the next big, round number with lots of zeroes -- 14 years instead of 12. While the total number of people on the planet is still growing fast, the nature and speed of that growth has been changing dramatically. This Economist video gives you great visual overview of the trends. (Is it just me or does that graphic look like a packet of birth-control pills?)

Even as we're adding people, we're also dramatically changing the demographic composition of entire societies, and creating different kinds of problems along the way -- like the challenge of aging populations in many developed countries. Bryan Walsh of Time suggests that immigration could be one solution:

[H]ere's the planet we could have in 2050: an overpopulated, overstressed developing world and an aging, economically stagnant developed world, with inequality even larger than it is today. Is there any way to escape that fate? While development and education will be incredibly important (especially for women -- literacy is one of the best ways to reduce fertility), the answer may end up being immigration. Think about it -- in the future the developed world will lack young workers, and the developing world will have an excess of that resource. Immigration could be a way to balance demographics and economics -- alleviating population pressure in the poorer parts of the world while jump starting aging developed nations. The U.S. already does this -- immigration will provide most of American population growth. It would be a radical solution, given the political resistance to increased immigration in much of the rich world. (If you think it's a hot topic in the U.S., try Japan, which steadfastly resists assimilating foreigners, despite the dire threat posed by an aging population.) But it might be the only way to save our overpopulated planet.

So much juicy stuff to talk about this year.

But for now, I'll leave you with this loooong graphic that puts some population numbers in perspective:

Image: U-Pack

Lisa Hymas is Grist’s senior editor. Follow her on Twitter

Mention fascism and most peoples' minds turn to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco's Spain , Salazar's Portugal , Japanese Fascism, Papadopoulos' Greece and South Africa 's Apartheid regime. However, most people are blissfully unaware of a rising form of fascism, more virulent than all past fascist regimes combined. Its aim is to subjugate the entire planet and its resources to U.S. corporate interests.

It is true that German Fascism was evil; but it is also true that its evilness has been exploited, even exaggerated, by one powerful Zionist entity and its supporters to justify the persecution and dispossession of the Palestinian people. German Fascism has diversified and mutated into super fascism supported by regimes claiming to be ?liberal democracies?.

The word Fascism originated from the Latin ?Fasces', means a bundle of sticks tied together to represent the ruling élite. At the heart of fascist ideology are corporatism, militarism, nationalism, racism and total control of citizens. Fascism is ?a political system or regime with a tendency toward or actual exercise of Fascism? [Webster's Dictionary]. Unfortunately, many opportunists and apologists for Israel-U.S. crimes use the word fascism as a name-calling, carelessly throwing it around to demonise others in order to mislead the public.

In his 2003 essay Fascism Anyone ? , the British writer Laurence W. Britt identifies fourteen characteristics of fascism common to past fascist regimes. Are they common and shared by regimes today? The purpose of this essay is to seriously inform people of the growing danger of fascism today, using the fourteen characteristics as a matchup.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism . Fascism is deeply rooted in a profound form of nationalism based on an illusion of race superiority, ?white supremacy?. The Patriotic Act, ?Anti-terrorism? laws, flag-waving, promotion of militarism and mass recitation of the ?Pledge of Allegiance? to promote war are common characteristics of xenophobic nationalism in the U.S. , Israel , Europe and Australia . The American historian Howard Zinn writes: ?Is not nationalism ? that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder ? one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking, cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on, have been useful to those in power and deadly for those out of power?. Negative nationalism, including ?patriotism?, is the greatest danger to civilisation.

In Europe , nationalism ? which once plunged Europeans into protracted and barbaric wars ? is on the rise and it is threatening the survival of the European Union itself. It is a deadly virus spreading like fire throughout Europe , while the U.S. looks on happily. As nationalism spreads, the fate of minorities is at the mercy of racist and populist sentiments.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights . Human rights are nothing more than a pretext to enforce Western domination on the rest of the world. The U.S. , Israel and Britain see human rights as an obstacle to their expansionist ideology and no countries in the world are more in contempt of international human rights law than the U.S. , Israel and Britain . The U.S. and Israel , in particular, are serial violators of human rights law. When European and U.S. politicians visited the Gaza Concentration Camp in Israel-occupied Palestine , the only prisoner they expressed concern about is an Israeli POW who has been accorded all his human rights under the Geneva Conventions by his Palestinian captors. They totally ignored some 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them women and children, who are subjected to gross human rights violations, including torture by the Israeli Gestapo. ?Through clever use of propaganda by marginalizing and demonizing those being targeted, the population was brought to accept human rights violations, including torture and sexual abuses. When the abuses were egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation?, writes Laurence. Human rights abuses, including torture, are part of America 's violent history. The U.S. aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan exposed America 's dark history of torture and flagrant abuses of human rights.

Prisoners of war and detainees (many without charges) were incarcerated, abused and tortured in global gulags and concentration camps around the world. From Guantánamo Bay Camp in Cuba to Afghanistan to Iraq and to countless ?black sites? prisons, innocent men, women and children have been subjected to injustice, human rights abuses and torture. In Iraq , there are hundreds of known and secret concentration camps and prisons, where innocent Iraqi civilians are being detained under deplorable conditions without being charged with any crime. Tens of thousands have been detained for years and an equal number have disappeared, possibly unlawfully executed. There are no charges, no due process and no justice. The situation in U.S.-NATO-occupied Afghanistan is even worse than in Iraq . Both nations were illegally invaded and have endured oppression, human rights abuses, injustice, torture, rape, and looting. One wonders why the Noble Prize Committee has no concern for Muslim prisoners' welfare.

It is well documented that the justice system in the U.S. is a travesty of justice. Guantánamo Bay Camp is considered ?outside U.S. legal jurisdiction? despite it is located on a U.S. Navy base in Cuba . This flawed argument is designed to deny justice to illegally detained men in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international human rights law. The Camp has become as notorious as Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram Base in Afghanistan . Prisoners, including male children, are denied their human rights, abused and tortured, and some have been executed. Many have been destroyed mentally, although they have committed no crimes. For example, Omar Khadr, an Afghan-Canadian (child soldier) prisoner of war in Guantánamo Bay Camp since he was 15 years old is a case of naked hypocrisy. Khadr was tortured and coerced (forced to sign a confession) into a plea-bargain and sentenced to 40 years in prison for allegedly killing a U.S. soldier on the battlefield while defending his country against an illegal foreign invasion, while U.S. and Western leader who committed heinous war crimes remain free and unindicted.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause . The most common characteristic of fascism is scapegoating of people from minorities. Even before 9/11, Muslims were identified as enemies, accused of ?taking-over' Europe . The event of 9/11 was an opportunity to justify attacking the scapegoats, Islam and Muslims. In Europe and many parts of the U.S. , Canada and Australia , Muslims are often unfairly depicted as terrorists, anti-women and violent in order to justify racism and injustices. False flag terrorist acts orchestrated by Western governments to justify gross injustice and stir up xenophobic fear against Muslims.

Most importantly, the rise of Islamophobia in the U.S. and Europe is fuelling the war on Islam and Muslim nations. In all these countries the population is fed (by the media) a daily diet of racism to improve their support for an aggressive war being waged by the U.S. and its allies against Islam and Muslims. In Australia , anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry have infected every Australian institution. Racial profiling of Muslims has become a cancerous disease speeding rabidly into Australian government agencies, universities and even schools.

In the U.S. , the war on Muslims is worsening and provides ammunition to America 's war on Islamic nations abroad. Islamophobia has become a fully-fledged Zionist industry that promotes fear of Muslims as part of the U.S. war. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of the ruling élite. ?Much of this bigotry and misinformation can be traced directly to what I am calling the infrastructure of hate, an industry which connects venomous anti-Islamic blogs, wealthy [Jewish] donors, powerful think tanks, and influential media commentators, journalists, and politicians?, writes Frankie Martin, the Ibn Khaldun Chair Research Fellow at American University's School of International Service in Washington DC ( Washington Post , 27 October 2010).

Europe has become a bastion of Islamophobia. Clones of Adolf Hitler are sprouting like wild mushrooms all over Europe . Their fascist policies have become part of Europe 's mainstream politics. Many of these small clones have said that they are proud to be compared to Adolf Hitler. Their support is growing alarmingly in countries with an ugly history of collaboration with Nazi Germany. In the so-called ?open? and ?tolerant? societies of Austria , Belgium , Britain , Croatia , Denmark , France , Holland , Hungry, Italy , Norway , Sweden and Switzerland fascist forces are on the rise with a Zionist and militarist agenda.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism . The military industrial complex is the most powerful corporate industry in the U.S. The U.S. military budget is phenomenal. It is estimated that the U.S. spent $623 billion ? not including $3 billion military aid to Israel ? on the military in 2008. U.S. military spending exceed the rest of the world's spending combined. U.S. military feeds on the largest budget and resources, even when more than fifty million Americans are in desperate need and the country is drowning in debt. Billions of U.S. tax payer dollars are spent on the military every day. As pointed out by Laurence; ?The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling élite?. The U.S. has access to the largest stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in the world. The world's most militarised society is also ruled by a wealthy Zionist and neo-fascist ruling élite that could blow up the world at any time.

In addition to this giant monster, the world largest military organisation, NATO, is under the control of US generals and remains an instrument of the U.S. militarism. ?The alliance itself is an excrescence of the U.S. military-industrial complex. For sixty years, military procurements and Pentagon contracts have been an essential source of industrial research, profits, jobs, Congressional careers, even university funding. The interplay of these varied interests converges to determine an implicit U.S. strategy of world conquest?, writes Diana Johnstone, author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia , NATO and Western Delusions . This offensive military ?alliance? continues to expand in dangerous direction.

Under the rubric of ?Western shared values and common interests?, the U.S. has assembled the biggest imperialist military force in history. Threatened and coerced, regimes from around the world are joining in droves with ?slavish devotion? to U.S. wars. As mentioned earlier, fascism protects corporate interests and the ruling élite. It is not difficult to argue why so many regimes are joining U.S. aggressive wars. If they cannot join the U.S war because of domestic pressure, they open their nations' door' to U.S. military. The U.S. military has more than 1,000 fortified military bases (large and small) in countries around the world. They are not only used as launch pads for aggression against other nations, but also protecting hideous and corrupt dictators in most countries where they are based. Most of these bases are installed against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the local populations.

In an interview on 29 November 2010 , U.S. ADM. James Stavridis, NATO supreme allied commander and U.S. European Command chief, told Defense News : ?NATO is ?a wealthy alliance' with a $31 trillion collective GDP. It is a ?big and capable alliance' with 7 million troops and 3,400 ships?. It is a truly super fascist alliance. Its new concept of ?expeditionary operations? means attacking nations beyond NATO territories, knowing that there is no other nation or groups of nations that pose any serious threat to this super fascist force. The existence of this militarised and ?wealthy alliance? depends on unprovoked aggression and manufactured pretexts for war.

Naked Aggression

Militarism and aggression go hand in hand, like a parasite and its host. Nazi Germany, Fascist Japan and Apartheid South Africa were notorious examples. Today, the U.S. , Britain and Israel are leading the way. In fact, there are striking similarities between the past three regimes and the current three regimes. Naked aggression has been integrated into U.S.-Western corporate culture.

Since World War Two, the U.S. ? supported by the like of Britain , Israel Canada and Australia ? has massacred more civilians and destroyed more nations than all past fascist regimes combined. It is rightly argued that every U.S. government (including every U.S. president) since 1945, is guilty of war crimes and flagrant violation of international law . Any nation that refuses to submit to U.S.-Zionist ideology and U.S. dictate is threatened with violence. ?You're either with us or against us?, said George W. Bush. There is no neutrality, and nations' sovereignty has become obsolete.

Even a great nation like China is threatened. If China ?refuses? to submit to Western dictate, we must be prepared to use force (i.e., aggression), said Kevin Rudd, former prime minister (now foreign minister) of Australia, the U.S. ?staunch? vassal in Asia-Pacific. You might think Rudd, who claims to be an ?expert? on China , would think twice before making such an unwise statement. ?Every 10 years or so the U.S. needs to pick up some [defenceless] little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business?, writes Michael Ledeen, a U.S. Zionist propagandist. Every country that has been invaded by the U.S. military was left a shattered graveyard and a humanitarian misery. The aim is to instil fear in the world's population, dominate the world and force U.S. diktat onto another people.

It is vitally important to highlight a few recent examples of U.S. aggression and flagrant violation of international law. The U.S. war on Korea (1950-1953) caused the unnecessary death of some 3 million Koreans and destroyed every city and village in North Korea (or Democratic People's Republic of Korea ). Since 1953, the DPRK has been defending itself against U.S. aggression and ongoing false propaganda. The 1953 armistice was designed to justify U.S. military presence in the region and threaten neighbouring nations.

A decade after the aggression against North Korea, the U.S. began another decade-long criminal aggression against the people of Vietnam that caused the death of more than 3 million innocent civilians, contaminating the country with biological and chemical agents, including napalm. Despite its military superiority, unlimited resources and indiscriminate violence, U.S.-imperialism was defeated by a peasant society. In 1991, the U.S. began a criminal aggression against Iraq to ?eradicate? its defeat in Vietnam and remove the so-called ? Vietnam syndrome?.

It is estimated the U.S.-Britain enforced genocidal sanctions on Iraq of 1990 caused the death of more than 2 million innocent Iraqi civilians, including the death of more than 600,000 infants under the age of five. On 15 December, 2010 , the UN Security Council ? chaired by none other than U.S. Vice-President, the Zionist Joe Biden ? voted to ?end? the sanctions on Iraq after the puppet government accepted U.S. conditions, including long-lasting colonial occupation. According to John Mueller and Karl Mueller, the brutal and inhumane sanctions against the Iraqi people have caused far more deaths over time than the combined use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the two world wars (Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999). Asked whether this was worth the death of half a million children, Madeleine Albright, the former U.S. Ambassador to the UN replied: ?We think the price is worth it?. Albright is a Jew and claims to be a ?Nazi holocaust? survivor.

 

The genocidal sanctions were followed by the criminal 2003 U.S.-British invasion. The unprovoked aggression is the most barbaric aggression in the history of barbarism; a supreme international war crime. It was aggression against a defenceless people under a genocidal siege. Despite the suffering inflicted on the Iraqi people, the crimes were covered-up by the media. (For more on U.S. crimes in Iraq , see: Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions , Harvard, 2010).

In 2001, the U.S. began replicating the atrocities of Vietnam in Afghanistan . Since that year, U.S. and NATO forces have occupied and terrorised the nation of Afghanistan . Thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed by indiscriminate and relentless aerial bombing and strafing, including the illegal and criminal drone attacks on Afghanistan and Pakistan that caused the death of more than 2,000 Pakistani civilians. For the people of Afghanistan , living conditions and security have deteriorated beyond belief under a new form of Western colonialism. Like all U.S. aggressions, the war on Afghanistan is a crime against humanity. It is vitally important to note that ?all the war crimes the U. S. has committed against other peoples were not planned and carried out by sadistic thugs or xenophobic right-wingers but by ordinary folks who come from solid family backgrounds, are well mannered, display elevated cultural taste, and may even be informed by good intentions. And the planners of these horrendous crimes are mostly so-called whiz kids liberal, cultured, urbane, visionary government officials and many celebrated academics from the Ivy League Schools?, writes Carl Boggs, a Professor of Social Sciences at National University in Los Angeles.

According to a report entitled Project for the New American Century authored by a gang of U.S. Zionists and neo-fascists, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Kagan, which was published 2008, the fall of Communism was an opportunity for the U.S. to rule the world militarily and establish a new worldwide empire through aggression and permanent war, using international organisations such as, the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC) to provide cover and legitimacy for U.S. crimes, mostly committed in broad daylight.

In October 2001, then U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney said that U.S. ?war on terror? was ?different? from other wars ?in the sense that it may never end. At least, not in our lifetime?. In other words, the U.S. is in a perpetual war of aggression against countries and people the U.S. ruling élite deemed to be counters to U.S. imperialism.

5. Rampant sexism . The ruling élite of fascist regimes tend to be male-dominated. Fascism mobilise masculine virile energy in time of war. One of the lies used to justify U.S. aggression against defenceless people is the ?liberation? of women. In fascist regimes, women are seen as less aggressive, gay-sympathisers and tend to be anti-abortion, although not all women are anti-abortion. In most U.S.-led Western societies, the political and economic establishments are still very male-dominated. Women are considered less intelligent and lack the ?ethics' of strong male leaders. Treated as second-class citizens, women play a secondary role. Violence, including sexual violence, against women is as high as U.S. skyscrapers. The current trend of using women as ?seductive? tools to win votes for a particular male-dominated party is a tragedy, not advancement in gender equality.

6. A controlled mass media. The media and the ?entertainment? industry important tasks are the coercion and indoctrination of the population from early childhood. Zionist propagandists called this the ?intelligent manipulation of the masses?. It is a formidable achievement with truly global results. Just take a look at the tens of thousands of Australians flocked to Sydney Harbour to see Oprah Winfrey.

Objectivity doesn't exist in corporate media, and ?free speech? is free if the ruling élite like it. Today's propaganda is more superior and more efficient than at any time in history of propaganda. It is a global propaganda rife with distortion, slander, cover-ups and outright lies. The main players are the U.S. government and wealthy U.S. Zionists with a complete monopoly on mainstream media. From TV channels such as, CNN, CBS, Fox News, BBC and print media like Murdoch Press and the New York Times, to Internet web sites like Google, Facebook and YouTube, all are owned by pro-Israel Zionist Jews. According to Canadian journalist, Eric Walberg, ?Google co-founder and billionaire Sergei Brin is a big supporter financially of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that funds Jewish immigrants to settle in Israel? on Palestinian land. In addition, the U.S. corporate élite and wealthy U.S. Zionists have a total control on the ?entertainment? industry, including Hollywood , which plays an important role in spreading pro-U.S. Zionist propaganda.

While the rhetoric of ?free media? is prevalent in most Western countries, a culture of censorship is widespread even by the most ?independent? and ?alternative? media outlets. Journalists and reporters have to abide by and adhere to a one-sided framework that promotes U.S.-Western fascist policies. Because if they deviates from this 'doctrinal framework' or from the line of serving power, they wouldn't get their rubbish published. Propagandists and apologists (i.e., accomplices in war crimes) are rewarded and elevated to iconic status in the media in order to be perceived by the public as even-handed ?intellectuals?. Anyone who deviates from this fascist framework risks persecution and character assassination.

There are ongoing criminal attacks by Western politicians and the corporate media on WikilLeaks for daring to release a large cache of U.S. ?diplomatic? cables. U.S. politicians and commentator in the corporate media have called WikilLeaks a terrorist organisation and are calling for its co-founder, Julian Assange, to be thrown in Guantánamo Bay Camp or killed by Special Forces. A former assistant to extremist Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has proposed assassination as the best way to remove Assange. The primary aim of this violent thinking is to warn and blackmail others. It is also possible that the U.S. and its allies are using WikilLeaks to justify silencing dissident media, particularly in the Internet.

While the WikilLeaks disclosure is a welcome relief, the mainstream and corporate media have selected a few cables to promote U.S. war on Iran and North Korea and to undermine the impact of the leaked information. As one of the New York Times mindless propagandists David Brooks writes: ?The Times has thus erected a series of filters between the 250,000 raw documents that WikilLeaks obtained and complete public exposure. The paper has released only a tiny percentage of the cables. Information that might endanger informants has been redacted. Specific cables have been put into context with broader reporting? ( NYT 29 November 2010 ). Where are the lies used to justify the U.S. aggression against Iraq ? Exposure of these lies will strengthen the case of war crimes against the perpetrators of the war and the deaths of more than a million innocent Iraqis. Does WikiLeaks have anything related to Israel 's serious war crimes and terrorist acts? In reality, a lot of the leaked cables are dubious in nature and benefit Israel 's fascist agenda more than undermining U.S. imperialism and threatening U.S. national security.

7. Obsession with national security . The so-called ?war on terrorism? is meaningless. First, it is a manufactured catchall phrase to label and demonise the enemy and protect the ruling élite; and second, it is a pretext to justify aggressive wars and control the population through draconian laws and repressive measures. The Washington Post ( 20 December 2010 ) reports that since 9/11 the U.S. ?is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators?. The U.S. claim that it needs the information to protect the population from acts of terrorism is ironic. The U.S. is the world's biggest exporter of terrorism and a source of instability everywhere. In the new age of ?security?, police and security guards litter the streets of Western cities and towns ready for every move. Peaceful protesters are attacked with rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray. If arrested, protestors risk criminal charges and imprisonment.

In the U.S. , presidential directives allow police and security agents (CIA and FBI) to abduct, kidnap, detain indefinitely and torture people suspected of planning ?terrorism?. In February 2010, President Obama signed a one-year extension of three provisions of the Patriot Act to allow the government ?to obtain roving wiretaps over multiple communication devices, seize suspects' records without their knowledge? ( Christian Science Monitor , 01 March, 2010 ). Americans have been told to spy on their neighbours, a despicable act which was used by the Nazis.

In the current case of WikilLeaks, a number of U.S. Congressmen and journalists have called for the prosecution of Julian Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act for breaching U.S. security. This is not something out of the blue, but has been used in the past to prosecute American citizens. It is reminiscent of Nazi Germany's prosecution of people ? labelled ?traitors? ? who criticised the Nazi Party or made jokes about the F u ehrer.

In the U.S. and in Europe , communities and entire cities have been subjected to 24-hour camera surveillance ? a form of repression. Large metropolitan cities like London , New York and Chicago have become forests of surveillance cameras and by far the most camera-surveilled cities in the world. One quarter of the world's surveillance cameras are in Britain . Citizens are watched around the clock and their movements are recorded and tracked (through a series of ID cards and credit cards) as they go about their daily business. In addition, many cities in the U.S. have begun using iris scanning technology, an invasive form of identification. Fear is forcing people to make more concessions.

According to civil rights groups and privacy advocates, the growing culture of surveillance poses great threat to civil liberties and personal freedom of citizens. The aim is to have total control of society by whatever means, and force people to submit to draconian laws. Furthermore, the obsession with national security is also a corporate business that benefits the manufacturers of surveillance cameras, iris scanners and their Congressional lobbyists. Security is simply a pretext for no personal security.

8. Religion and ruling élite tied together . George W. Bush justified his criminal wars as a ?message from God?. Hence, opposing Bush's war crimes was considered an attack on God, Bush's God. The U.S. is not exceptional, most regimes (even the most unreligious) use religion to rally support for a godless ruling élite.

The U.S is one of the most religious countries in the world, almost fanatical. Successive U.S. regimes attached themselves to the state predominant religion, Christianity. Furthermore, a large segment of the American population, including more than fifty million (and growing) Evangelical Christian-fascists are religious fanatics that form the political base of the Republicans Party.

No other nation uses religion to justify war crimes than the state of Israel in Palestine . The Zionist entity is forcing the rest of the world to recognise it as a ?Jewish state?, so it can commit more crimes.

9. Power of corporations protected . Fascism is characterised by a ?corporatist approach to economics?, as in the U.S. and major Western states today. Indeed, protection of corporate power is an essential part of fascism. It is not secret, what is good for IBM and Boeing is good for the country. According to a new report by the New York Times , even the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is increasingly defending and siding with corporate interests. The ruling élite ?have chosen to serve the narrowest possible private minority interests of transnational financial and industrial corporations?, writes Susan George of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam . Hence, fascism is corporatism. The ruling élite writes the rules in ways to benefit the few (owners of corporations) at the expense of the majority. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised.

The ruling élite see the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production, but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic élite were often pampered by the political élite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of the ?have-not? citizens. The ruling-corporate élites are so powerful, even if a change in the White House doesn't lead to a change in policy. The Obama Administration proposal of a two-year pay freeze for all civilian federal workers while leaving Wall Street and corporate CEOs to continue making record profits and bonuses through tax cuts and bail-out is a case in point. In his recent fiscal deal with the Republicans, President Obama cut the net earnings of the lowest-paid workers and passed them to the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans. In other words , Obama agreed to extend George W. Bush tax cut to the wealthiest Americans.

10. Power of labour suppressed or eliminated . Under fascist regimes, unions and organised labour are considered enemies of the state. In the U.S, the working-class or public workers have been decimated by successive U.S. regimes on behalf of big wealthy corporations.

In most Western countries striking union workers were attacked and organized labour was crashed by the ruling élite and its corporate allies. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former Australian Prime Minister, the bigoted John Howard, were vicious enemies of unions and the working-class. In Germany , France , Spain and Greece , anti-labour laws are on the rise.

One of the major reasons Western powerful corporations have relocated their export industries off-shore to China and elsewhere is to exploit the labour there and ineffective regulations in host countries. The high profit operations have destroyed organised labour at home in the U.S. , Europe , Japan and South Korea . Economic ?globalisation', a variant of U.S. imperialism, has perpetuated workers' exploitation.

Local workers (? Third World ? workers) are forced to work under criminal and inhumane conditions, and paid poverty-level wages. If they protest, they will be dealt with severely. The recent case in Chittagong , Bangladesh when police fired on striking garment workers killing four and injuring more than 150 is a case in point.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts . ?Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes?, writes Laurence. In fascist regimes, ignorance is encouraged while intellectualism and awareness were discouraged. Intellectuals and the arts are promoted and encouraged as far as they provide needed propaganda.

In the U.S. , the McCarthyism era was followed by different forms of repression. People who question or doubt the official story of 9/11 are demonised and depicted as anti-American ?conspirators?. The event was used as an opportunity for the U.S. government to crackdown on dissent, including students' protest and academic freedom.

Through tight control of intellectual and academic freedom, universities have turned into right-wing think tanks and racist laboratories of citizens' indoctrination. Universities have become powerful and privileged corporations that seemed far removed from the daily life of ordinary people. Academics are paid propagandists spreading falsehoods to manipulate the masses.

Terry Eagleton, who was forced to retire from his post as John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at Manchester University writes: ?By and large, academic institutions have shifted from being the accusers of corporate capitalism to being its accomplices. They are intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries?. As Laurence writes; ?Politically independent academics were harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed?.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment . The U.S. is leading the world in incarceration rates and the prison industry is one of the largest ?growth? industries. The U.S. has more prisoners than anywhere on the planet. Nearly 10% of the population or one in 100 adults in the U.S. is in jail or prison. On average, one in every 20 American men is behind bars or ?being monitored?. In 2008, about 5.1 million people were on probation or parole. Most of those incarcerated are African-Americans and Latinos caught in an unjust and corrupt justice system. According to the Washington Post ( 29 February 2008 ); ?One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group?.

Police power is sacrosanct and promoted to the point of encouraging abuse of people from minorities. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuses. Petty crime is exaggerated and used as an excuse for more police power. With the help of the media and Hollywood , crimes have also become an obsession of the majority. The ruling élite likes to talk tough every time they talk about crimes ? but not their own.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption . The U.S. and Israel are ranked very high amongst the most corrupt nations in the world. The economic and the ruling élite use their positions to enrich themselves and their cronies. ?Corruption worked both ways; the ruling élite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic élite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favouritism?, writes Laurence.

In general, cronyism and corruption are widespread in most Western countries, but it is cleverly covered-up and normalised in the media and in ruling élite circles. For example, in Australia , cronyism and corruption are parts of the Australian culture and deeply embedded in every government, public and private institution. Privileged employment and positions are all in the hands of white Australians and it is a well-fenced territory. There is no exception throughout Australia ; no one state is more corrupt and more prejudiced than the other.

The same rampant culture of cronyism and corruption is also exported world-wide, particularly, to countries occupied by Western forces. After the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq , U.S. authorities began an expensive campaign to promote cronyism and corruption among the ruling élite, the puppet governments. The aim is to demonise the nations and cover-up the crimes of the occupying forces. It is no coincidence that Afghanistan and Iraq are amongst the most corrupt nations in the world today.

14. Fraudulent elections . Former U.S. president George W. Bush was an illegitimate president for two terms having arrived at the White House through well-known rigged elections. In general, U.S. elections are nothing more than a marketing campaign to manipulate and deceive the public because the U.S. is ruled by a powerful unelected ruling class. It is a plutocracy masquerading as democracy. The so-called, two-party system is a fraud. It is a one-party with two branches system that serves corporate interest. It doesn't matter who occupy the White House.

The U.S. love affair with fraudulent elections in countries ruled by murderous dictators and corrupt despots is not secret. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Kosovo to Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan to Egypt and to Honduras and Haiti , the U.S. record of financing and staging fraudulent elections is staggering. Moreover, U.S. role in ?colour revolutions? ? in Uzbekistan , Georgia , Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan ? produced the kind of despots that the U.S. ruling élite love to support. In reality, the U.S. is a leading exporter of fraudulent elections and an arch enemy of democracy. Throughout the world, U.S. interference is designed to promote instability and exploit local conflicts to expand U.S. imperialism.

In most European countries that pretend to be ?liberal democracies?, elections lack transparency and accountability, which undermines democracy and gives rise to cynicism and mistrust. They are becoming increasingly authoritarian. It is true people have to vote, but their votes are meaningless. It is always, the same old wine in new bottle. All over Europe , elections are used to manipulate and con the population. ?The European Union is not a democratic entity?, writes Susan George. It is an authoritarian state. ?Anti-democratic values are taking hold. We have become stakeholders instead of citizens, consumers instead of sovereign people, we are offered consultation rather than real participation?, she added.

Writing in The New York Review of Books in 1995, the Italian writer and academic Umberto Eco, also identified fourteen ?features that are typical? of what Eco called ?Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism?. Umberto noted that not all of the fourteen features have to be present at the same time for a regime to be called fascist, and ?many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it?. Umberto writes: ?Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes [ Croatia ]. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound [the American expatriate fascist]. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola?. Like the above matchup of fourteen characteristics, Umberto argued that all fourteen features that he identified applied to the U.S. regime to some degree.

Finally, the U.S. and many U.S. allies ? Britain and Israel , to name two ? have already entered a moment with all the characteristics of fascist regimes. With a complete monopoly on military power, violence and the media, the U.S. is a super fascist state, proliferating and propping-up smaller fascist states. It has become clear that world order is no longer governed by international law and civilised norms, nor by treaties based on peaceful and multilateral agreements. It is based on the U.S. use of military threat and violence in pursuit of a fascist ideology to dominate the world on behalf of U.S. ruling-corporate élite.

It is not difficult to predict the future under U.S. fascist domination. Fascism is not the way to defend freedom, promote democracy and provide security, adherence to the rules of law and civilised norms is. It is the duty of conscious people to dissent against a U.S.-led super fascism on behalf of humanity.

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia .

After the Macondo well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, it was easy enough (on your choice of screen) to see a flaming oil platform, the very sea itself set afire with huge plumes of black smoke rising, and the dark smear of what would become five million barrels of oil beginning to soak birds and beaches. Infinitely harder to see and less dramatic was the vast counterforce soon at work: the mobilizing of tens of thousands of volunteers, including passionate locals from fishermen in the Louisiana Oystermen’s Association to an outraged tattoo-artist-turned-organizer, from visiting scientists, activist groups, and Catholic Charities reaching out to Vietnamese fishing families to the journalist and oil-policy expert Antonia Juhasz, and Rosina Philippe of the Atakapa-Ishak tribe in Grand Bayou. And don’t forget the ceaseless toil of the Sierra Club’s local environmental justice organizer, the Gulf Coast Restoration Network, the New Orleans-born poet-turned-investigator Abe Louise Young, and so many more than I can list here.

I think of one ornithologist I met in Grand Bayou who had been dispatched to the Gulf by an organization, but had decided to stay on even if his funding ran out. This mild-mannered man with a giant pair of binoculars seemed to have some form of pneumonia, possibly induced by oil-fume inhalation, but that didn’t stop him. He was among the thousands whose purpose in the Gulf had nothing to do with profit, unless you’re talking about profiting the planet.

The force he represented mattered there, as it does everywhere -- a force that has become ever more visible to me as I live and journey among those who dedicate themselves to their ideals and act on their solidarities. Only now, though, am I really beginning to understand the full scope of its power.

Long ago, Adam Smith wrote about the “invisible hand” of the free market, a phrase which always brings to my mind horror movies and Gothic novels in which detached and phantasmagorical limbs go about their work crawling and clawing away. The idea was that the economy would somehow self-regulate and so didn’t need to be interfered with further -- or so still go the justifications for capitalism, even though it took an enormous armature of government interventions to create the current mix of wealth and poverty in our world. Your tax dollars pay for wars that make the world safe for giant oil corporations, and those corporations hand over huge sums of money to their favorite politicians (and they have so many favorites!) to regulate the political system to continue to protect, reward, and enrich themselves. But you know that story well.

As 2010 ends, what really interests me aren’t the corrosions and failures of this system, but the way another system, another invisible hand, is always at work in what you could think of as the great, ongoing, Manichean arm-wrestling match that keeps our planet spinning. The invisible claw of the market may fail to comprehend how powerful the other hand -- the one that gives rather than takes -- is, but neither does that open hand know itself or its own power. It should. We all should.

The Iceberg Economy

Who wouldn’t agree that our society is capitalistic, based on competition and selfishness? As it happens, however, huge areas of our lives are also based on gift economies, barter, mutual aid, and giving without hope of return (principles that have little or nothing to do with competition, selfishness, or scarcity economics). Think of the relations between friends, between family members, the activities of volunteers or those who have chosen their vocation on principle rather than for profit.

Think of the acts of those -- from daycare worker to nursing home aide or the editor of TomDispatch.com -- who do more, and do it more passionately, than they are paid to do; think of the armies of the unpaid who are at “work” counterbalancing and cleaning up after the invisible hand and making every effort to loosen its grip on our collective throat. Such acts represent the relations of the great majority of us some of the time and a minority of us all the time. They are, as the two feminist economists who published together as J. K. Gibson-Graham noted, the nine-tenths of the economic iceberg that is below the waterline.

Capitalism is only kept going by this army of anti-capitalists, who constantly exert their powers to clean up after it, and at least partially compensate for its destructiveness. Behind the system we all know, in other words, is a shadow system of kindness, the other invisible hand. Much of its work now lies in simply undoing the depredations of the official system. Its achievements are often hard to see or grasp. How can you add up the foreclosures and evictions that don’t happen, the forests that aren’t leveled, the species that don’t go extinct, the discriminations that don’t occur?

The official economic arrangements and the laws that enforce them ensure that hungry and homeless people will be plentiful amid plenty. The shadow system provides soup kitchens, food pantries, and giveaways, takes in the unemployed, evicted, and foreclosed upon, defends the indigent, tutors the poorly schooled, comforts the neglected, provides loans, gifts, donations, and a thousand other forms of practical solidarity, as well as emotional support. In the meantime, others seek to reform or transform the system from the inside and out, and in this way, inch by inch, inroads have been made on many fronts over the past half century.

The terrible things done, often in our name and thanks in part to the complicity of our silence or ignorance, matter. They are what wells up daily in the news and attracts our attention. In estimating the true make-up of the world, however, gauging the depth and breadth of this other force is no less important. What actually sustains life is far closer to home and more essential, even if deeper in the shadows, than market forces and much more interesting than selfishness.

Most of the real work on this planet is not done for profit: it’s done at home, for each other, for affection, out of idealism, and it starts with the heroic effort to sustain each helpless human being for all those years before fending for yourself becomes feasible. Years ago, when my friends started having babies I finally began to grasp just what kind of labor goes into sustaining one baby from birth just to toddlerhood.

If you do the math, with nearly seven billion of us on Earth right now, that means seven billion years of near-constant tending only to get children upright and walking, a labor of love that adds up to more than the age of this planet. That’s not a small force, even if it is only a force of maintenance. Still, the same fierce affection and determination pushes back everywhere at the forces of destruction.

Though I’m not sure I could bring myself to watch yet again that Christmas (and banking) classic It’s a Wonderful Life, its premise -- that the effects of what we do might best be gauged by considering what the world would be like without us -- is still useful. For the American environment, this last year was, at best, a mixed one. Nonetheless, polar bears got some protection and the building of at least one nuclear power plant was prevented; the work of groups like the Sierra Club continued to keep new coal-fired power plants at bay; and Californians defeated a sinister oil-company-sponsored initiative, to name just a few of the more positive developments. Erase all the groups at work on the environment, hardly noticed by the rest of us, and it would have been a massacre.

The Alternatives to “There Is No Alternative”

We not only have a largely capitalist economy but an ideological system that justifies this as inevitable. “There is no alternative,” as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used to like to say. Many still argue that this is simply the best human nature, nasty to the core, can possibly hope to manage.

Fortunately, it’s not true. Not only is there an alternative, but it’s here and always has been. Recently, I had dinner with Renato Redentor Constantino, a climate and social justice activist from the Philippines, and he mentioned that he never cared for the slogan, “Another world is possible.” That other world is not just possible, he pointed out, it’s always been here.

We tend to think revolution has to mean a big in-the-streets, winner-take-all battle that culminates with regime change, but in the past half century it has far more often involved a trillion tiny acts of resistance that sometimes cumulatively change a society so much that the laws have no choice but to follow after. Certainly, American society has changed profoundly over the past half century for those among us who are not male, or straight, or white, or Christian, becoming far less discriminatory and exclusionary.

Radicals often speak as though we live in a bleak landscape in which the good has yet to be born, the revolution yet to begin. As Constantino points out, both of them are here, right now, and they always have been. They are represented in countless acts of solidarity and resistance, and sometimes they even triumph. When they don’t -- and that’s often enough -- they still do a great deal to counterbalance the official organization of our country and economy. That organization ensures oil spills, while the revolutionaries, if you want to call them that, head for the birds and the beaches, and maybe, while they’re at it, change the official order a little, too.

Of course, nothing’s quite as simple as that. After all, there are saints in government and monsters in the progressive movement; there’s petroleum in my gas tank and money in my name in banks. To suggest that the world is so easily divided into one hand and the other, selfish and altruistic, is impossibly reductive, but talking in binaries has an advantage: it lets you focus on what is seldom acknowledged.

To say there is no alternative dismisses both the desire for and the possibility of alternative arrangements of power. For example, how do you square a Republican Party hell-bent on preserving tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans with a new poll by two university economists suggesting that nearly all of us want something quite different? The pollsters showed a cross-section of Americans pie charts depicting three degrees of wealth distribution in three societies, and asked them what their ideal distribution of wealth might be. The unidentified charts ranged from our colossal disparity to absolute equality, with Swedish moderation in-between.

Most chose Sweden as the closest to their ideal. According to the pollsters, the choice suggested that "Americans prefer some inequality to perfect equality, but not to the degree currently present in the United States.”

It might help to remember how close we had come to Sweden by the late 1970s, when income disparity was at its low ebb and the Reagan revolution was yet to launch. Of course, these days we in the U.S. aren’t offered Swedish wealth distribution, since the system set up to represent us actually spends much of its time representing self-interest and moneyed interests instead. The Republicans are now being offered even larger bribes than the Democrats to vote in the interests of the ultra-affluent, whether corporate or individual. Both parties, however, helped produce the Supreme Court that, in January, gave corporations and the wealthy unprecedented power in our political system, power that it will take all our energy to counteract and maybe, someday, force into retreat.

By the way, in searching for that Thatcher no-alternative quote, I found myself on a page at Wikipedia that included the following fundraising plea from a Russian woman scientist: “Almost every day I come home from work and spend several hours improving Wikipedia! Why would I donate so much of my free time? Because I believe that by giving my time and effort -- along with thousands of other people of different nationalities, religion, ages -- we will one day have shared and free knowledge for all people.”

Imperfect as it may be, ad-free, nonprofit Wikipedia’s sheer scope -- 3.5 million entries in English alone, to say nothing of smaller Norwegian, Vietnamese, Persian, and Waray-Waray versions with more than 100,000 articles each -- is an astonishing testimony to a human urge to work without recompense when the cause matters.

Butterfly Spotting

The novelist and avid lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov once asked someone coming down a trail in the Rockies whether he’d seen any butterflies. The answer was negative; there were no butterflies. Nabokov, of course, went up that same trail and saw butterflies galore.

You see what you’re looking for. Most of us are constantly urged to see the world as, at best, a competitive place and, at worst, a constant war of each against each, and you can see just that without even bothering to look too hard. But that’s not all you can see.

Writing my recent book about disasters, A Paradise Built in Hell, led me to look at the extraordinary way people behave when faced with catastrophes and crises. From news coverage to Hollywood movies, the media suggest that, in these moments of turbulence when institutions often cease to function, we revert to our original nature in a Hobbesian wilderness where people fend for themselves.

Here’s the surprise though: in such situations, most of us fend for each other most of the time -- and beautifully at that. Perhaps this, rather than (human) nature red in tooth and claw, is our original nature. At least, the evidence is clear that people not only behave well, but take deep pleasure in doing so, a pleasure so intense it suggests that an unspoken, unmet appetite for meaningful work and vibrant solidarities lives powerfully within us. Those appetites can be found reflected almost nowhere in the mainstream media, and we are normally told that the world in which such appetites might be satisfied is “utopian,” impossible to reach because of our savage competitiveness, and so should be left to the most hopeless of dreamers.

Even reports meant to be sympathetic to the possibility that another better world could exist in us right now accept our Social-Darwinian essence as a given. Consider a November New York Times piece on empathy and bullying in which David Bornstein wrote,

“We know that humans are hardwired to be aggressive and selfish. But a growing body of research is demonstrating that there is also a biological basis for human compassion. Brain scans reveal that when we contemplate violence done to others we activate the same regions in our brains that fire up when mothers gaze at their children, suggesting that caring for strangers may be instinctual. When we help others, areas of the brain associated with pleasure also light up. Research by Felix Warneken and Michael Tomasello indicates that toddlers as young as 18 months behave altruistically.”

Are we really hardwired to be aggressive and selfish, as Bornstein says at the outset? Are you? No evidence for such a statement need be given, even in an essay that provides plenty of evidence to the contrary, as it’s supposed to be a fact universally acknowledged, rather than an opinion.

The Compassion Boom

If I were to use the normal language of the marketplace right now, I’d say that compassion and altruism are hot. It might, however, be more useful to say that the question of the nature of human nature is being reconsidered at the moment by scientists, economists, and social theorists in all sorts of curious combinations and coalitions. Take, for example, the University of California’s Greater Good Science Center, which describes itself as studying “the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.” Founding director Dacher Keltner writes, “Recent studies of compassion argue persuasively for a different take on human nature, one that rejects the preeminence of self-interest.”

A few dozen miles away is Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, which likewise draws on researchers in disciplines ranging from neuroscience to Buddhist ethics. Bornstein’s essay mentions another organization, Roots of Empathy in Toronto, that reduces violence and increases empathy among children. Experiments, programs, and activities like this proliferate.

Independent scholars and writers are looking at the same underlying question, and stories in the news this year -- such as those on school bullying -- address questions of how our society gets organized, and for whose benefit. The suicides of several queer young people generated a groundswell of anti-bullying organizing and soul-searching, notably the largely online “It Gets Better” attempt to reach out to queer youth.

In a very different arena, neoliberalism -- the economic system that lets the invisible hand throttle what it might -- has finally come into question in the mainstream (whereas if you questioned it in 1999, you were a troglodyte and a flat-Earther). Hillary Clinton lied her way through the 2008 primary, claiming she never supported NAFTA, and her husband, who brought it to us, publicly apologized for the way his policies eliminated Haiti’s rice tariffs. “It was a mistake," Bill Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 10th. "I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did."

Think of those doing the research on altruism and compassion as a radical scholarly movement, one that could undermine the philosophical and political assumptions behind our current economic system, which is also our political system. These individuals and organizations are putting together the proof that not only is another world possible, but it’s been here all along, as visible, should we care to look, as Nabokov’s butterflies.

Do not underestimate the power of this force. The world could be much better if more of us were more active on behalf of what we believe in and love; it would be much worse if countless activists weren’t already at work from Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma and the climate activists in Tuvalu to the homeless activists around the corner from me. When I studied disasters past, what amazed me was not just that people behaved so beautifully, but that, in doing so, they found such joy. It seems that something in their natures, starved in ordinary times, was fed by the opportunity, under the worst of conditions, to be generous, brave, idealistic, and connected; and when this appetite was fulfilled, the joy shone out, even amid the ruins.

Don’t think of this as simply a description of my hopes for 2011, but of what was going on right under our noses in 2010; it’s a force we would do well to name, recognize, celebrate, and enlarge upon now. It is who we are, if only we knew it.

Rebecca Solnit hangs out with climate-change activists, homeless advocates, booksellers, civil libertarians, anti-war veterans, moms, urbanists, Zen monks, and investigative journalists and she sure didn't write this piece for the money. She is the author of 13 books, including last year's A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, and this year's Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas.

Copyright 2010 Rebecca Solnit

Monbiot.com

Yes, the extreme cold in the UK right now really could be a result of global warming.

There were two silent calls, followed by a message left on my answerphone. She had a soft, gentle voice and a mid-Wales accent. “You are a liar Mr Monbiot. You and James Hansen and all your lying colleagues. I’m going to make you pay back the money my son gave to your causes. It’s minus 18 degrees and my pipes have frozen. You liar. Is this your global warming?”. She’s not going to like the answer, and nor are you. It may be yes.

There is now strong evidence to suggest that the unusually cold winters of the past two years in the UK are the result of heating elsewhere. With the help of the severe weather analyst John Mason and the Climate Science Rapid Response Team(1), I’ve been through as much of the scientific literature as I can lay hands on. (Please also see John Mason’s article, which explains the issue in more detail(2)). Here’s what seems to be happening.

The global temperature maps published by NASA present a striking picture(3). Last month’s shows a deep blue splodge over Iceland, Spitsbergen, Scandanavia and the UK, and another over the western US and eastern Pacific. Temperatures in these regions were between 0.5 and 4 degrees colder than the November average from 1951 and 1980. But on either side of these cool blue pools are raging fires of orange, red and maroon: the temperatures in western Greenland, northern Canada and Siberia were between two and ten degrees higher than usual(4). NASA’s Arctic oscillations map for December 3-10 shows that parts of Baffin Island and central Greenland were 15 degrees warmer than the average for 2002 to 2009(5). There was a similar pattern last winter(6). These anomalies appear to be connected.

The weather we get in UK winters, for example, is strongly linked to the contrasting pressure between the Icelandic Low and the Azores High. When there’s a big pressure difference, the winds come in from the south-west, bringing mild, damp weather from the Atlantic. When there’s a smaller gradient, air is often able to flow down from the Arctic. High pressure in the icy north last winter, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA), blocked the usual pattern and “allowed cold air from the Arctic to penetrate all the way into Europe, eastern China, and Washington DC”(7). Another US agency, NASA, reports that the same thing is happening this winter(8).

Sea ice in the Arctic has two main effects on the weather. Because it’s white, it bounces back heat from the sun, preventing it from entering the sea. It also creates a barrier between the water and the atmosphere, reducing the amount of heat that escapes from the sea into the air. In the autumns of 2009 and 2010, the coverage of Arctic sea ice was much lower than the long-term average: the second smallest, last month, of any recorded November(9). The open sea, being darker, absorbed more heat from the sun in the warmer, light months. As it remained clear for longer than usual, it also bled more heat into the Arctic atmosphere. This caused higher air pressures, reducing the gradient between the Iceland Low and the Azores High.

So why wasn’t this predicted by climate scientists? Actually it was, and we missed it. Obsessed by possible changes to ocean circulation (the Gulf Stream grinding to a halt), we overlooked the effects on atmospheric circulation. A link between summer sea ice in the Arctic and winter temperatures in the northern hemisphere was first proposed in 1914(10). Close mapping of the relationship dates back to 1990, and has been strengthened by detailed modelling since 2006(11,12,13,14,15,16).

Will this become the pattern? It’s not yet clear. Vladimir Petoukhov of the Potsdam Institute says that the effects of shrinking sea ice “could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia.”(17) James Hansen of NASA counters that 7 of the past 10 European winters were warmer than average(18). There are plenty of other variables: we can’t predict the depth of British winters solely by the extent of sea ice.

I can already hear the howls of execration: now you’re claiming that this cooling is the result of warming! Well yes, it could be. A global warming trend doesn’t mean that every region becomes warmer, every month. That’s what averages are for: they put local events in context. The denial of manmade climate change has mutated first into a denial of science in general, now into a denial of basic arithmetic. If it’s snowing in Britain, a thousand websites and quite a few newspapers tell us, the planet can’t be warming.

According to NASA’s datasets, the world has just experienced the warmest January-November since the global record began, 131 years ago(19). 2010 looks likely to be either the hottest or the equal hottest year. This November was the warmest on record(20).

Sod all that, my correspondents insist: just look out of the window. No explanation of the numbers, no description of the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Arctic Dipole, no reminder of current temperatures in other parts of the world, can compete with the observation than there’s a foot of snow outside. We are simple, earthy creatures, governed by our senses. What we see and taste and feel overrides analysis. The cold has reason in a deathly grip.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.climaterapidresponse.org/

2. http://www.geologywales.co.uk/storms/winter1011a.htm

3. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/

4. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=11&sat=4&sst=
1&type=anoms&mean_gen=11&year1=2010&year2=2010&base1=
1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg

5. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=47880

6. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=11&sat=
4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=12&year1=2009&year2=2009&base
1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg

7. J. Overland, M. Wang, and J. Walsh, 14th October 2010. Arctic Report Card. http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/atmosphere.html

8. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=47880

9. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported on 6 December 2010. ***

10. HH Hildebrandsson, 1914. Cited by Dagmar Budikova, 2009. Role of Arctic sea ice in global atmospheric circulation: A review. Global and Planetary Change Vol 68, pp 149–163. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2009.04.001

11. There’s a review of the science until early 2009 at:
Dagmar Budikova, 2009. Role of Arctic sea ice in global atmospheric circulation: A review. Global and Planetary Change Vol 68, pp 149–163. doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2009.04.001

12. More recent modelling work is summarised by James Overland and Muyin Wang, 2010. Large-scale atmospheric circulation changes are associated with the recent loss of Arctic sea ice. Tellus Vol 62A, pp1–9. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0870.2009.00421.x

See also the following recent papers:

13. Jennifer A. Francis et al, 2009. Winter Northern Hemisphere weather patterns remember summer
Arctic sea-ice extent. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 36, L07503, doi:10.1029/2009GL037274.

14. Meiji Honda, Jun Inoue and Shozo Yamane, 2009. Influence of low Arctic sea-ice minima on anomalously cold Eurasian winters. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 36, L08707. doi:10.1029/2008GL037079.

15. Vladimir Petoukhov and Vladimir* Semenov, 2010. A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 115, D21111. doi:10.1029/2009JD013568.

16. Chunzai Wang, Hailong Liu, Sang-Ki Lee, 2010. The record-breaking cold temperatures during the winter of 2009/2010 in the Northern Hemisphere. Atmospheric Science Letters, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp 161–168. doi: 10.1002/asl.278

17. http://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-releases/global-warming-could-cool-down-temperatures-in-winter

18. James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Makiko Sato and Ken Lo, 13th December 2010. GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: 2010 - Global Temperature and Europe’s Frigid Air. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/

19. James Hansen et al, as above.

20. James Hansen et al, as above.

 

Published in the Guardian 21st December 2010

Yes! Magazine

More and more people, communities, and nations are taking steps to reduce their vulnerability to a volatile global economy

It makes us angry when we hear—time and again—mainstream pundits and policy makers claim that there is no alternative to the past 30 years’ path of gearing economies toward the global market. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Currently, as financial markets stagnate and food prices swing wildly and the environment is under siege, more and more people, communities, and nations are taking steps to reduce their vulnerability to a volatile global economy. Many are proceeding to build what we like to call more “rooted” alternatives.

In the Philippines, for instance, we find a refreshing openness to new directions from the halls of the new Congress to the rice fields of the southern island of Mindanao. Many people have come to understand that the dominant approach to the economy since the final years of the Marcos dictatorship, building on 400 years of colonialism, has failed: This more vulnerable approach geared the economy toward the plunder of fish, forests, and minerals that enriched the few and impoverished workers, farmers, and fishers. It created an agriculture sector that is dependent upon unreliable imports rather than geared to feeding the people.

Industrialization occurred in export enclaves, mainly of electronics, that profited corporations but remains dependent upon unreliable overseas markets. And, the model depends upon the export of Filipino workers to other countries to send home money to relatives, since the economy is not providing for their needs. The result is a plundered environment and an economy that is vulnerable to the shocks of a shaky world economy.

We will tell you more about what we find in the Philippines in subsequent blogs, but today we want to deal head-on with the “there is no alternative” myth.

So, what is the alternative?

How about an economy that encourages the stewardship of forests, fisheries and land for community needs? One that encourages agriculture that is good for the soil, feeds everyone an adequate diet, and reorients industry for people’s needs? How about a finance system that helps small enterprises, and an economy that creates enough good jobs and livelihoods so that youth see a future at home?

There is in fact an upsurge of efforts in this direction in the United States, in Europe, and in a number of poorer countries—including many parts of the Philippines. In the United States, the Institute for Policy Studies, YES! Magazine, and several other groups have come together to form a “New Economy Working Group.” They have proposed that in order to transform economies to meet the crises, economic life should be organized around three principles.

The first is “ecological balance"—ecosystems should be managed sustainably. This is best done when communities control the natural resources on which they depend. The second is “equitable distribution.” A growing body of evidence suggests that societies that share wealth more equitably enjoy greater health, less violence, and stronger communities. A final principal is “living democracy” (in the words of both Vandana Shiva and Frances Moore Lappé) which involves daily practices of civic engagement in decision making as well as broad participation in the ownership of community assets. People around the world are proposing alternatives and rebuilding parts of economic life based on these principles. Here are four key areas:

New indicators: What you measure is vital. The emphasis of most governments on measuring growth does not reveal much about the health of a society. So, a number of institutions, from the United Nations Development Program to a French government commission led by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, have developed new indicators that measure health, welfare, and different aspects of the three principals above. When governments around the world start paying more attention to such indicators and less to growth, there will be more incentives and even more popular demand for policies that enhance community and human welfare.

Close the financial casino: For two decades, there was competition in the financial centers of most countries to develop elaborate new-fangled financial instruments that enriched a new financial elite. This casino activity is what triggered the Wall Street collapse of 2008. Today, more and more economists, business people, and citizens are pressing for regulations that would ban such purely speculative financial activities. The U.S. government, for one, is now giving some incentives to boost local financial institutions offering credit to community enterprises and to individuals in need.

Sustainable agriculture: Around the world, millions of farmers are shifting from chemical-intensive agriculture to organic and sustainable agriculture. We find a frenzy of such activity on the ground in the Philippines, and in future blogs we’ll introduce you to farmers whose shift to organics has lowered costs, improved health, cleaned up the environment, and empowered individuals and families.

Global rules and institutions that support a new economy: Vibrant local communities depend upon governments to make rules at the national and global levels supporting such activity. Our governments should replace the World Trade Organization, which sets global trade and investment rules in ways that inhibit local and national governments from favoring local firms over global ones. In the Philippines’ case, the WTO has been central to the ripping open of agricultural markets, making the nation dependent on rice and food imports that led to the food price crisis of 2008. The alternative? Building global institutions and rules that support more rooted economies. For example, several governments and many citizen groups in the West are now pressing richer countries to place a small “speculation tax” on the sale of stock, currency and derivatives, and to steer the revenues toward jobs and climate finance in poorer countries like the Philippines.

So, in the spirit of the holiday season: Yes, Virginia, there are a multitude of rooted alternatives.

Robin Broad and John Cavanagh wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Robin is a Professor of International Development at American University in Washington, D.C. and has worked as an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Congress. John is on leave from directing the Institute for Policy Studies, and is co-chair (with David Korten) of the New Economy Working Group. They are co-authors of three books on the global economy, and are currently traveling the country and the world to write a book entitled Local Dreams: Finding Rootedness in the Age of Vulnerability.

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A solution that is sometimes proposed for the dilemma of fossil-fuel decline is a global campaign for the humane implementation of rapid population decline (RPD). With all due respect for the attempt to find a satisfying answer to the question of overpopulation, such a proposal would conflict with the available data on the rate of decline in fossil fuels. The annual rate of population decline, in a civilization in which fossil fuels are the principal source of energy, must roughly equal that annual rate of fossil-fuel decline, which is probably about 6 percent (Höök, Hirsch, & Aleklett, 2009, June).

Unfortunately there is no practical humane means of imposing a similar 6 percent annual rate of decline on the world’s population. If we let Nature, i.e. loss of petroleum, take its course, a decline of 6 percent would result in a drop in world population to half its present level, i.e. to 3.5 billion, by about the year 2020, a mere decade from now. The only means, however, would be a rather grim one: famine.

On the other hand, a deliberate global campaign of RPD, even with the immediate implementation of an utterly hypothetical fertility rate of zero (i.e. the implementation of a “zero-child policy”), would be far less dramatic. The rate of population decline would exactly equal the death rate. (This is true by definition: “growth rate” equals “birth rate” minus “death rate”, and we have already said “birth rate” is zero.) The present death rate is about 1 percent (CIA, 2010). At that rate, the global population in the year 2020 would still be about 6.3 billion. There would therefore be no means for such a program of RPD to work before the effects of fossil-fuel depletion took their own toll.

(Such figures for an RPD program, of course, disregard any other possible catastrophic future events such as famine [the above-mentioned means that is in fact likely to prevail], disease, war, general anarchy, and a thousand other side-effects of societal breakdown.)

Incidentally, we can also consider the more long-range effects of the previously-mentioned depletion in fossil fuels. If we assume that agriculture is ultimately unsustainable (Diamond, 1987, May; Ferguson, 2003, July/August; Lee, 1968), then we must regard a population of 1 million, as existed in 10,000 BCE, as ideal. To be generous, however, let us choose 10 million as a final stabilized population. With an annual decline in fossil fuels of 6 percent, a final drop to that relatively feasible population of 10 million will be in about the year 2110.

A global campaign for RPD may be regarded as one form of the soft-landing scenario. If we must reject such an RPD campaign and soft landings in general, the following three points might constitute a basic statement of global systemic collapse:

1. Modern industrial civilization is based on fossil fuels; we have been burning 30 billion barrels of oil a year. Fossil fuels provide our manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, mining, and electricity. The main problem is peak oil: the world’s supply of usable, recoverable petroleum is starting to diminish. The best estimate of the annual rate of decline might be 6 percent, which means production will drop to one half of the peak amount around 2020. There is a common belief that “alternative energy” can replace fossil fuels; the quest for alternative energy, however, has been going on for decades with no very practical results, mainly because of the barrier of insufficient “energy return on energy invested”.

2. Fossil fuels are not the only foundation of modern industrial civilization. Of roughly equal importance are metals and electricity. This triad is synergistic: if one of the three should fail, then so do the other two. Fossil fuels are in decline, but metals are also becoming less plentiful. Electricity will be in decline worldwide because it is produced mainly with fossil fuels.

3. Peak oil basically means peak food. Without mechanization, irrigation, and synthetic fertilizer, crop yields drop considerably, and famine is inevitable. Over the next few decades, the survivors will be those who have mastered the art of subsistence farming. Ultimately, however, it may be that the Paleolithic practice of foraging, with a greatly reduced population, is the only way of life that can be extended for millennia.

The first two of those three points, however, are really a case of going over ground that has been covered many times in the past. What I have stated above about the necessity for a smaller population has certainly also been said, in more or less the same manner, by many others.

The only point that is worth discussing is number 3, not 1 or 2. Perhaps it would also be worthwhile to discuss a hypothetical point 4, whatever that might consist of. On the other hand, there is really nothing to be gained by further discussion of whether the peak oil date is imminent, for example, or whether there are untapped sources of alternative energy. The important topics for further research are solely those related to the survival skills needed by the population that remains. It is only queries of that sort that are positive responses to the coming disaster. Putting further effort into questioning the basic existence of the disaster means wasting time that should be spent in dealing with matters beyond points 1 and 2.

The collective unconscious of the year 2010 seems to have been a mixture of apathy and despair, but such muteness is based on a misunderstanding. While the rich minority are buying land in Paraguay, the poor majority have descended into catatonia, yet it is the former who have a clearer vision of the future. One can only hope that there will be more of a proactive approach, and that more people will acquire the aforementioned survival skills. Perhaps my passion for books influences me unduly, but I even suspect that if reading and writing could be preserved, in the manner of the medieval scriptorium, then some sort of enlightened primitivism could prevail in the coming ages.

REFERENCES:

CIA. World factbook. (2010). US Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook

Diamond, J. (1987, May). The worst mistake in the history of the human race. Discover. Retrieved from http://www.environment.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf

Ferguson, R. B. (2003, July/August). The birth of war. Natural History.

Höök, M., Hirsch, R., & Aleklett, K. (2009, June). Giant oil field decline rates and their influence on world oil production. Energy Policy, (37) 6, 2262-72. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2009.02.020

Lee, R. B. (1968). What hunters do for a living, or, How to make out on scarce resources. In R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, Eds., Man the Hunter. Chicago: Aldine Publishing.

Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American Indians, published by Chicago Review Press. His email address is odonatus {at} live.com.

50 years from now historians may write about the fall of empire. But history is writing itself furiously right now, accelerated by the revolution of global freedom of information.

50 years from now historians will probably be writing about the fall of the American empire. But history is writing itself furiously in the present, accelerated by the revolution of global freedom of information. What would have taken years to gather is accessible to anyone with a few strokes on a computer keyboard. So never mind the historians of the future, and lets  see how  reality is shaping up today.

The crumbling period of the United States empire started on September 11th. Since then, a chain of events so dire occurred that it would seem the empire defeated itself by a series of catastrophic mistakes. After 9/11,  Americans wanted revenge, and the war in Afghanistan became a very easy sale for the Bush administration. But then the neo-cons seized the opportunity to push their agenda  of the New American Century project, and it was precisely the Achille’s heel of the empire.

Attacking Iraq: The Biggest Geopolitical Blunder In History

When the Bush administration attacked Iraq in 2003, a critical element escaped their understanding of the regional and demographic parameters: By toppling the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein, they would give the upper hand to the oppressed Shia Iraqi majority allied with Iran.

In a word, the US troops who fought and died in the conflict did it ultimately for the regional benefit of the Iranian Islamic Republic. The blunders did not stop with geopolitics, but were compounded by a catastrophic financial burden.

The Cost Of Wars in Iraq And Afghanistan Is Bankrupting The US Economy

If the Pentagon was a corporation, it would be the largest in the world. The curiously called Department Of Defense has cost the  American taxpayers, since the ill advised attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, around $700 billion a year. Of course, if you add up health care for wounded veterans, and  layers of new “security” administration such as the Department of Homeland Security,   the numbers keep adding up to top $1 trillion a year. Overall more than 25 percent of the federal budget gets swallowed in the financial black hole that is the Pentagon.

If Americans could do the math, they would quickly understand that the bill for the two wars is now creeping up to $10 trillion. In order to achieve the chimeric goals of the neocons of an ever lasting global American empire money had to be borrowed. Currently, for every dollar spent by the federal government 40 cents is borrowed. America used to borrow mainly from Japan and Europe, but now does its main borrowing from China. In a striking reversal of fortune, the “poor man of Asia” has now become the country in the world with the most liquid assets.

Empires Always Have An Expiration Date

Americans have a delusional  sense of historic exceptionalism which they share with most previous empires. After all America’s ascension to a leading role on the world scene is very recent. The deal was sealed in Yalta in 1945 between Stalin and Roosevelt, with Churchill present but already taking the back seat. In a matter of 5 years, and about 60 million deaths, two new empires had emerged from the ruin of three: the United States and the Soviet Union. On the losing side of history was, of course, Japan, the empire of the sun, but also Britain and France.

The old imperial powers of Britain and France were slow to fully understand the nature of the new game. It took the loss of India for the United Kingdom, in 1948,  and the one of Indochina for France in 1951 to make them understand that they would have from now on an ever shrinking role on the world stage. However, it took 9 years for Britain and France to fully digest the consequences of Yalta. In 1956, France and Britain took their very last joint imperialist venture by attacking Egypt over the ownership of the Suez Canal. The decaying empires were told to back off by the United States and the USSR.

A Repressive Capitalist  Globalization Or The Revolution Of Global Freedom Of Information ?

The Cold War was a fairly predictable era. Beside a few flashpoints such as the Cuba missile crisis, the two superpowers fought to augment their respective turfs through proxy wars. But Afghanistan came along for the Soviets, and the long war made the USSR collapsed. Naturally the United States started acting as the only super-power left, and for this reason as the master of the universe.

The narrative of Ronald Reagan is peppered by such elements, and so is the one of all of his successors including Barack Obama. But all empires had the same  distorted visions of themselves, the Romans imposed the Pax Romana on their vassals for a long time , so did Charlemagne, and Napoleon for a much shorter time. In any sense, power is cyclical and never lasts.

Thanks to WikiLeaks and the courage of his founder Julian Assange and the one of  Pentagon’s whistleblower Bradley Manning, it has become rather obvious that while President Obama has changed the official tone of Washington from the Bush administration, the overall goals of US foreign policies have remained  the same: Ensure and expend  US power and authority on vassal states. This push to establish a new world order under exclusive US authority has been prevalent in all of the US administrations since Ronald Reagan and the end of the cold war.

President Obama, despite what could be his personal convictions is a prisoner of this imperial system. Obama is trapped by a complex nexus of inter-locking institutions such as the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department etc, and by powerful interest groups profiting from endless wars. The very same institutions and interest groups have been at the core of every post-1945 imperial presidency. As early as 1946, president Harry Truman said: “From Darius’ Persia, Alexander’s Greece, Hadrian’s Rome, Victoria’s Britain; no nation or group of nations has had our responsibilities.”

However, most analysts and foreign policy experts currently assume that the present century will not be American. In this tectonic  power shift, under the push of China and India, the emerging new world order will be plural and decentralized. But the main question is: How Americans will adapt to this new paradigm where the United States loses its status of uncontested leadership?

It was another tough year for the coal industry. In the last 25 months not one coal-fired power plant broke ground for construction in the United States. In 2010 alone a total of 38 proposed plants were erased from the drawing board, the most ever recorded in a single year. Utilities also announced 12,000 MW in coal plant retirements -- or enough power to bring electricity to a whopping 12 million American households. And even Massey Energy's infamous henchman Don Blankenship is set to retire, effective next month.  

Indeed coal executives got what they deserved in their stockings this holiday season -- big lumps of black coal. "I predict historians will point at 2010 as the year that coal's influence peaked and began declining," says Bruce Nilles, deputy conservation director of the Sierra Club, whose organization released a year-end report on coal in the U.S.  

Nilles is correct; the coal boom out west looks to be over, as companies like Arch and Peabody scramble to figure out what to do with their vast reserves while U.S. markets begin to dwindle. The EPA has also not been as friendly to this portion of the energy sector as in years past, placing most coal permits for mountaintop removal on hold and even recommending a veto of the proposed Spruce Mine in West Virginia, which would be the largest of its kind in the country.  

With the help of Rainforest Action Network and other grassroots activists, financing for new mining projects from the likes of PNC and UBS will prove difficult from now on. In 2010 both banks joined the growing number of lending institutions that are turning their backs on mountaintop removal ventures. During the first half of this year renewable energy projects also accounted for 93 percent of all proposed projects.  

Back in 2001 the outlook for the coal trade looked much different. At the time, a total of 150 plants were proposed in the U.S. It was to kick off the coal rush of the millennium. But citizen opposition mounted in the form of legal battles, public education efforts, demonstrations and well-executed divestment campaigns all over country. From the streets of Washington to the rural outback of South Dakota people became outraged. Concern for public health and the awareness of coal's contribution to climate change increased dramatically. The result has been exceptional: a total of 149 of those 150 plant proposals have been halted outright.  

Who said environmentalism is dead? When it comes to coal anyway, the movement is alive and well with dozens of victories under its belt in the last two years alone.  

Nonetheless, it's just the beginning. According to Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Space Institute, ending emissions from coal is "is 80 percent of the solution to the global warming crisis." Hansen says this is because of three straightforward reasons: 1) according to most estimates coal is much more plentiful than oil and gas; 2) coal is far more carbon intensive than any other fossil fuel; and 3) coal use is concentrated in the United States in around 600 power plants (dozens of which are already slated for closure), whereas other fuels are spread among an array of sources.  

Climate scientists estimate that greenhouse gas levels have already passed the dangerous benchmark of 350 parts per million. However, in order to curb this dire trend, and bring down this number dramatically, Hansen and others say we must eliminate coal use in the United States by 2030.  

Is it doable? It certainly looks to be.
 
To put the numbers in perspective, in order to bring all U.S. coal offline over the course of the next 20 years, this means we must retire an average of 15,000 MW of coal power annually. So despite 2010's huge success with 12,000 MW chalked up for closure, the pace must be increased.  

No question the anti-coal movement has its work cut out for it. One huge problem is that coal plants in China are being built at a rapid pace -- almost two mid-sized plants every week. But perhaps fortunately, the country cannot continue to exponentially burn coal without running out of its national supply, at which point it will have to import all the coal they consume to keep their industry running. No doubt this means burning coal mined in the U.S., which along with Canada holds the world's largest percentage of coal reserves.  

That's exactly why companies operating in the coal-rich Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana, like Peabody and Arch Coal, have been fixated on the booming Asian markets, promising their shareholders that future profits are sure to rain down, compliments of the Chinese.  

First, of course, these coal companies will have to ship their products across the Pacific Ocean, which will require coal-capable ports to be operable up and down the West Coast. Currently only one port in Vancouver, BC is set up to export coal. In order to meet the growing demand in China and elsewhere, ports from Long Beach, California all the way up to Canada will have to able to load ships with coal in the future.  

As such, the new frontier for anti-coal campaigners may well shift to Western coastal states, which have already begun to turn away from the polluting fossil fuel.  

First, Oregon is looking to nix coal burning by shutting down the state's sole Boardman plant by 2020, if not sooner. California already burns very little coal while the state's largest consumer of power, the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power, is set to end its purchasing of coal power generated by Arizona's Navajo Station within the next 10 years. And activists in Washington are working hard to shut down the state's sole coal facility in Centralia. Simply put, coal isn't popular on the Left Coast.

While these states have almost unanimously recognized the need to ditch coal, they are nonetheless being eyed for port redevelopments by the coal executives, the first of which is already underway just north of Portland, Oregon in the town of Longview, Washington.  

Coal opponents are already gearing up for battle. Earthjustice and others seeking to challenge the Longview port permit on the grounds the facility would exacerbate climate change and threaten human health, filed a lawsuit in early December. The suit was the first of its kind in the United States, no question a sign of what's to come in the years ahead.  

"Coal companies are targeting Washington as a gateway for coal export to China," said K.C. Golden, policy director of Climate Solutions, which joined Earthjustice in the Longview lawsuit. "This one facility would export about as much coal as the whole state of Washington now uses, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. It flies in the face of the state's commitment to climate solutions and leadership in the clean energy economy. The most jobs, the best jobs, are in building our clean energy economy, not in serving as a resource colony for Asian economies."  

The victories of the past two years in the fight against coal have set a strong precedent and the coal industry has been put on alert: the jig is up boys. No longer will coal companies be able to operate with impunity.   

"None of this would have been possible without [all of those] who have engaged to stop new coal plants and new coal mines, and push for retirement of the existing coal fleet," says Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club. "This grassroots campaign is growing in leaps and bounds on college campuses, in urban and rural areas, and from coast to coast."  

So here's to a prosperous 2011. For the days of coal profiteering are numbered.

India tour for the Future
10 December 2010- 2 January 2011
Luchnow - New Delhi - Chennai - Pondicherry - Auroville - New Delhi

From 10 December 2010 to 2 January 2011 Nina Goncharova visited India and took part in several events in different parts of India with the purpose: to create conditions for a smooth transition into a new world - from consumption to conscious co-creation in unity with Highest worlds, oneself, nature, humanity and the Universe.

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There is currently a great expansion of what can be called “The Global Civil Society”— a host of commercial companies, media outlets, and non-governmental organizations ((NGOs) whose activities cross State frontiers. Often the staff members of these organizations come from a variety of countries and backgrounds. This global civil society is increasingly powerful though its power has been little analysed.

One analysis of the environmental and social justice aspect of the global civil society has been made by the English environmental activist Paul Hawken Blessed unrest: how the largest movement in the world came into being, and why no one saw it. (New York: Viking, 2007). Many of these ecological organizations have very local aims, but there is an awareness of the inter-relatedness of issues and that peace, environmental protection, ecologically-sound development and financial balance have global dimensions.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) whose birth anniversary we mark on 15 January is the ideological pioneer of the Global Civil Society, even if he is little quoted. Proudhon’s 1960 work Du Principe Féderalif (On Federalism) is his most lasting and important work. In it he develops his major themes: justice, liberty, equality, and the need to develop autonomous communities tied to each other by contracts— thus forming a type of federation. Proudhon saw the need for links between many different types of units: towns, factories, workshops, cooperatives. With such links among productive units, there would be less need for political governments, especially not centralized governments. While Proudhon’s examples were drawn from the two countries he knew best – France and Belgium – his vision applies well to the global civil society. Proudhon can be best described as a “pluralist” holding that freedom of thought and expression, freedom of communication and movement will usually be better served in small, decentralized and voluntarily-federated communities rather than in the system of state nationalism growing in his day.

The global civil society is still feared by nationalistic governments who want to control NGOs and who use the external contacts of NGOs as a pretext to clamp down, especially on human rights activists who challenge authoritarian rule. Communication technology and increased mobility of individuals make such government control more difficult. The global civil society is made of flexible organizations in loose partnership agreements but with a common aim of mutual empowerment.

The global civil society is a ‘power shift’ of potentially historic dimensions with bonds of trust, shared values and mutual obligations which cross national frontiers. Proudhon was able to look realistically at the society of his time with its poverty and injustices, but he also saw signs of hope. His influence was carried on through such writer-activists as Michel Bakounine (1814-1876) and Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) Thus today, we need to be able to analyse, communicate and work cooperatively to develop a global civil society based on the ethic of human worth and dignity.

Rene Wadlow, Representative to the UN, Geneva, Association of World Citizens

You can’t bargain about global warming with chemistry and physics

The UN’s big climate conference ended Saturday in Cancún, with claims of modest victory. "The UN climate talks are off the life-support machine," said Tim Gore of Oxfam. “Not as rancorous as last year’s train wreck in Copenhagen,” wrote the Guardian. Patricia Espinosa, the Mexican foreign minister who brokered the final compromise, described it as "the best we could achieve at this point in a long process."

The conference did indeed make progress on a few important issues: the outlines of financial aid for developing countries to help them deal with climate change, and some ideas on how to monitor greenhouse gas emissions in China and India. But it basically ignored the two crucial questions: How much carbon will we cut, and how fast?

On those topics, one voice spoke more eloquently than all the 9,000 delegates, reporters, and activists gathered in Cancún.

And he wasn’t even there. And he wasn’t even talking about climate.

Barack Obama was in Washington, holding a press conference to discuss the liberal insurgency against his taxation agreement with the Republicans. He said he’d fought hard for a deal and resented the criticism. He harked back to the health-care fight when what his press secretary had called the “professional left” (and Rahm Emanuel had called “retards”) scorned him for not winning a “public option.” They were worse than wrong, he said; they were contemptible, people who wanted to “be able to feel good about ourselves, and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are.” Consider Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he continued: when he started Social Security it only covered widows and orphans. Medicare, at its start, only helped a relative few. Sanctimonious purists would have considered them “betrayals of some abstract ideal.” And yet they grew.

It was powerful and interesting stuff, especially coming from a man who ran on abstract ideals. (I have t-shirts on which are printed nothing but his name and abstract ideals.) I don’t know enough about health-care policy or tax policy to be sure whether he’s making a good call or not, though after listening to much of Bernie Sanders's nearly nine-hour near-filibuster I have my doubts.

I do know the one place where the president’s reasonable compromises simply won’t work -- a place where we have absolutely no choice but to steer by abstract ideals. That place is the climate.

The terms of the climate change conundrum aren’t set by contending ideologies, whose adherents can argue till the end of time about whether tax cuts create jobs or kill them. In the case of global warming, chemistry rules, which means there are lines, hard and fast. Those of you who remember your periodic table will recall how neat that can be. There’s no shading between one element and the next. It’s either gallium or it’s zinc. There’s no zallium, no ginc. You might say that the elements are, in that sense, abstract ideals.

So are the molecules those elements combine to form. Take carbon dioxide (CO2), the most politically charged molecule on Earth. As the encyclopedia says: “At standard pressure and temperature the density of carbon dioxide is around 1.98 kg/m3, about 1.5 times that of air. The carbon dioxide molecule (O=C=O) contains two double bonds and has a linear shape.” Oh, and that particular molecular structure traps heat near the planet that would otherwise radiate back out into space, giving rise to what we call the greenhouse effect.

As of January 2008, our best climatologists gave us a number for how much carbon in the atmosphere is too much. At concentrations above 350 parts per million (ppm), a NASA team insisted, we can’t have a planet “similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted.” We’re already past that; we’re at 390 ppm. Which is why 2010 will be the warmest year on record, almost a degree Celsius above the planet’s natural average, according to federal researchers. Which is why the Arctic melted again this summer, and Russia caught fire, and Pakistan drowned.

So here’s the thing: Just as in Copenhagen, Obama’s delegation in Cancún has been arguing for an agreement that would limit atmospheric concentrations of CO2 to 450 parts per million, and the cuts they’ve been proposing might actually produce a world of about 550 parts per million.

Why have they been defying the science? The answer isn’t complicated: because it’s politically difficult. As chief negotiator Todd Stern said last year in Copenhagen, “We’re very, very mindful of the importance of our domestic legislation. That’s a core principle for me and everyone else working on this. You can’t jeopardize that.”

In other words, if we push too hard the Senate will say no, and the oil companies will be really, really pissed. So we’ll take the easy way. We’ll negotiate with nature, and with the rest of the world, the same way we negotiate with the Republicans.

It’s completely understandable; in fact, it’s even more understandable now that the GOP has increased its muscle in Congress. In that context, even the tepid text drafted in Cancún goes too far. Four Republican Senators sent Obama a letter earlier this month telling him to stop using any foreign aid funds to tackle climate change. If I were Obama I’d want to make some kind of deal, and consider any deal as the start down a path to better things.

The problem, again, is the chemistry and the physics. They don’t give us much time, and they’re bad at haggling. If we let this planet warm much longer, scientists tell us that we’ll lose forever the chance of getting back to 350. That means we’ll lose forever the basic architecture of our planet with its frozen poles. Already the ocean is turning steadily more acidic; already the atmosphere is growing steadily wetter, which means desertifying evaporation in arid areas and downpour and deluge elsewhere.

Political reality is hard to change, harder than ever since the Supreme Court delivered its Citizens United decision and loosed floods of more money into our political world. But physics and chemistry are downright impossible to shift. Physics and chemistry don’t bargain. So the president, and all the rest of us, had really better try a little harder. The movement we’ve launched at 350.org has spread around the world, but it needs to get much stronger. Because this one time, in the usually messy conduct of human affairs, reaching an abstract ideal is our only hope.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College and founder of 350.org. His latest book is Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. He recently was awarded the prestigious Puffin Prize. To listen to a TomCast audio interview in which McKibben discusses various kinds of global-warming denial, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.

“History will be the judge of what has happened in Cancun.” These are the last lines of the Bolivian Government’s press release yesterday about the outcome of the climate negotiations here in Cancun. The talks ended here today after two weeks of negotiations by a 192 governments. It is a deal that will be remembered by our future generations as one that killed the climate treaty, unless we radically change course.

Witnessing standing ovations and applause in the closing hours over negotiating texts that basically kill the Kyoto Protocol and make emissions reductions voluntary for all governments fills me with a profound sense of disillusionment (you can view the final plenaries here). Disillusionment at the utter lack of leadership exhibited by virtually every government except Bolivia and disillusionment at the role that many environmental and development groups played in legitimizing these governments’ actions.

The compromise arrived at Cancun was a coup for the United States. The U.S. came in with nothing to offer in terms of binding commitments to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and yet managed to effectively push for voluntary targets. The source of these targets is the “Copenhagen Accord” that President Obama negotiated by cornering a few key countries in a back room in the last hours of the climate negotiations a year ago.

“There is only one way to measure the success of a climate agreement, and that is based on whether or not it will effectively reduce emissions to prevent runaway climate change. This text clearly fails, as it could allow global temperatures to increase by more than 4 degrees, a level disastrous for humanity,” says Bolivia.

Sadly, Bolivia was set up as the scapegoat at the meeting—portrayed as the only country standing in the way of multilateralism and progress on a climate deal. “The perfect is the enemy of the good,” they said.

Manufacturing Consensus

This scapegoating is nothing new. I have witnessed it in the WTO where governments, under great pressure by powerful countries like the United States and the EU, are too afraid to speak out or too keen to be seen as constructive actors on the geopolitical theater. And theater it was last night—as country after country—applauded the President of the COP, for her “open and transparent” process and a successful outcome. Yet in reality, we all knew that the deal had been negotiated behind closed doors by a handful of countries. At times, there were 50 countries in a room somewhere in the conference complex.

But we did not know where and we did not know what they were negotiating. Civil society, unlike other UN negotiations, was not allowed in any of the drafting groups. And what governments drafted did not even seem to appear in the texts crafted by the Chairs of the two negotiating tracks of the climate talks.

In the closing hours of the COP, Bolivia made strong statements that it did not agree to the outcome and that there was no consensus. In the UN, all countries must agree and have “consensus” before a treaty or a deal is adopted. In Cancun, the deal was ceremoniously gaveled as agreed.

For civil society organizations, Cancun must be a wake up call for serious reflection. How have we been complicit in an outcome that has ultimately not respected the science of global warming? Worse still, some have applauded an outcome that lets industrialized countries off the hook from legally binding and mandatory targets to reduce GHGs—something they agreed to when they signed the Kyoto Protocol.

The 20th anniversary of the birth of the Climate Treaty is 2012 and the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. Let's ensure that by the time we get there, we have managed to shift the fundamental elements of what was agreed here in Cancun towards a much more accountable framework to address climate change.

Shefali Sharma is Senior Program Officer at IATP and blogged from Cancun the day after the UN climate talks concluded.

We are trapped in a very complex civilization that is rapidly losing the sources of energy and numerous other raw materials that built and maintained it

In case you missed it, a couple of weeks back the International Energy Agency in Paris got around to disclosing that the all-time peak of global conventional oil production occurred back in 2006. Despite that fact that this declaration was tantamount to announcing the end of the 250-year-old industrial age, few in the mainstream media noted the event and it was left to obscure corners of cyber space to ponder the meaning of it all.

It is also worth noting that oil is back in the vicinity of $90 a barrel and even Wall Street economists, who are paid to be eternally optimistic, are starting to talk about oil going for$110-120 a barrel in the next year or so.

In the meantime, the talking heads, pundits and even hard-headed reporters chatter on about the slow but persistent economic recovery that is supposed to be taking place. As the effects of last year's near-trillion dollar stimulus start to be felt, every statistical twitch upward is hailed as proof that normalcy will soon return. Realists, however, call this twitching "bottom-bouncing" and are convinced that far worse is yet to come.

As we all know by now, a new crowd has descended on Washington vowing to make everything right again by cutting taxes, reducing the size and the role of some parts of the government. Above all the folks are committed to getting government regulation off our backs so that free enterprise, the entrepreneurial spirit, merchant capitalism, or what have you can flourish as it did in the past.

What all those calling for reduced government fail to grasp, however, is that 200 years of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy has transformed this country into something completely different. Take food as an example, 200 years ago, some 90+ percent of us were involved in its raising or otherwise procuring food -- or we would simply not eat. Now, thanks to cheap fossil fuels, less than 3 percent of us are engaged in agricultural endeavors and I suspect only a fraction of our "farmers" still have all the requisite skills to feed themselves and their families in the style to which they have become accustomed. Take away the diesel for the tractors and farming is going to become mighty different. Has anyone yoked an ox lately?

In short, 200 years of abundant energy have allowed us to build an extremely complex civilization based on dozens of interrelated systems without which we can no longer live - at least not in the style to which we have become accustomed. Food production and distribution, water, sewage, solid waste removal, communications, healthcare, transportation, public safety, education --- the list of systems vital-to-life and general wellbeing goes on and on.

Those who believe that ten years from now we will be able to get along with much reduced government have little appreciation of how modern civilization works or how bad things are going to get as fossil fuel energy fades from our lives. The notion is absurd that we are in the midst of a routine downturn in the business cycle which can be cured by Keynesian stimulus favored by the Democrats or tax cuts favored by the Republicans.

While no one can foretell the future in detail, every now and again a window opens that allows a general outline of coming events to emerge. For example, in the years leading up to the Second World War one did not have to be clairvoyant to appreciate that a great disaster was about to befall.

Although few recognize how precarious the situation is, we are trapped in a very complex civilization that is rapidly losing the sources of energy and numerous other raw materials that built and maintained it. In America today we have millions un- and under-employed and that is certain to grow into the tens of millions before the decade is out as our politicians horse-trade tax cuts for billionaires in return for extensions of unemployment benefits. The good news is that this phase of the great transition from the industrial age to that which will follow cannot last much longer for events are moving too fast.

Whether one likes it or not, the size and complexity of the coming transition will be so great and unprecedented and there will be so much at stake that only governments will have the authority and power to cope with the multitude of problems that are about to emerge. Be it heresy in some as yet unknowing circles; all this is going to require a massive transfer of resources from private hands to public ones. Take something as simple as jobs. If anyone thinks the employment situation is difficult, wait a few years until the very high priced motor fuels makes discretionary car travel unaffordable. Millions upon millions of jobs in the retail, travel, hospitality, recreational, and dozens of other industries will be lost.

The current efforts by various levels of government to stimulate job creation or save people from home foreclosures will prove to be ridiculously inadequate. A completely new paradigm of what we do to sustain life is going to have to emerge or things will become far worse than most of us have ever known. Modern civilization simply cannot stand a situation in which a substantial share of its people is destitute. The potential for social disorder is too great.

If current trends continue, somewhere in the next five years a critical mass of us will realize that new foundations for civilization, and new ways of life must be found and implemented if we are going to survive with a modicum of comfort, economic, and political stability. Until then there will be many false prophets calling for a return to a civilization which is no longer possible.

Tom Whipple is a retired government analyst and has been following the peak oil issue for several years.

Cancun, Mexico, December 7, 2010 – Concern for high-mountain regions of the world is rising, according to a new report released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today, which states that the Himalayas and many other glaciers are melting quickly, threatening lives by flooding, and by reducing the region’s freshwater supply. The findings of the report, “High mountain glaciers and climate change” were announced during the UN climate meetings in Cancun, where negotiators are working towards an agreement to reduce climate emissions.

The new UNEP data underlines the urgent need for climate action that will produce quick results – a topic addressed by a separate event today in Cancun, hosted by UNEP and the Federated States of Micronesia, a country calling for a fast-action work program to protect its low-lying islands and other vulnerable countries from climate change impacts.

The panel of scientists and policymakers, including UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, and Mexican Nobel Laureate Mario Molina, emphasized the need to address non-CO2 climate forcers like black carbon soot, methane, tropospheric ozone, and HFCs to achieve fast mitigation.

Black carbon, a particulate aerosol produced from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass burning, directly contributes to glacial melt by settling on snow and ice, which darkens the surface and then absorbs the heat instead of reflecting it.

“The Himalayan glaciers are the main freshwater source for hundreds of millions of people across several countries,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. “Fast mitigation of black carbon soot and other non-CO2 forces are the best hope to avert disaster.”

Because these non-CO2 climate warming agents are short-lived in the atmosphere compared to CO2, which can remain for hundreds to thousands of years, reducing them can buy critical time to make aggressive cuts in CO2 emissions.

Added Zaelke, whose organization focuses on the non-CO2 issue and is attending the meetings in Mexico: “Reducing CO2 is essential and we can’t lose that focus, but these are complementary measures that are within easy reach. We would be guilty of Planetary malpractice to waste this opportunity.”

Achim Steiner stated that reducing the non-CO2 forcers “can buy back some of the time” the world has wasted by not addressing CO2 earlier.

Press release online: http://igsd.org/news/documents/PR_glacierreport-cancunsideevent_7Dec2010.pdf

NATO officials confirmed to this reporter that they routinely destroy Afghan homes, businesses and other structures that may be linked to the Taliban, but they refuse to provide any statistics as to how many have been destroyed. The Washington Post and The New York Times indicate that the practice is widespread and they have confirmed that whole villages have been leveled. (These field reports are referenced at the end of this article.) In June, 2010, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights, Richard Falk publicly condemned the Israeli Government for its destruction of Palestinian homes. In contrast, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, and the U.N.’s Special Representative in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, have been deplorably silent regarding similar actions by UN-supported NATO forces in Afghanistan.

This is what we know. NATO soldiers in Afghanistan operates under the acronym "ISAF" ISAF troops have the authority to destroy any structure in Afghanistan which they believe is being used to store weapons or narcotics, or which may be booby-trapped with explosives. The standard seems to be that any home can be destroyed with artillery or air strikes as long as there is some suspicion regarding it. The rationale for the destructions is that searching potentially booby-trapped homes is too dangerous a task.

There are at least six problems with this ISAF policy:

1. Under the Annex to the Hague Convention, Chapter 1, Article 23(g), Occupying Powers cannot destroy enemy property unless it is "imperatively demanded by the necessities of war." Pursuant to the Geneva Convention of 1949 (Geneva IV), Section 111, Article 53, occupying powers are prohibited from destroying any civilian personal property unless it is "absolutely necessary." International occupational law is dominated by the requirement of military necessity and suspicions do not constitute such necessity; nor do tips from informants. Homes cannot be destroyed just because they might possibly pose a risk to troops searching the home. If the ISAF policy was lawful, its officials would be citing the Hague and Geneva IV language and would be detailing how international standards are being met. The fact that they do not, speaks volumes.

In the past, ISAF officials have denied that they are an occupying power in Afghanistan, pointing to the existence of the democratically elected Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai. While ISAF officials pay lip service to the illusion of the Afghan Government’s "sovereignty," they have repeatedly confirmed that President Karzai lacks the authority to issue them orders, including an order to end the night raids by special operations troops. The NATO/Karzai Lisbon Agreement of 2010, states that control of Afghanistan will be turned over to President Karzai by 2014. Thus, it is undisputed that NATO is an occupying power.

One of the shameful consequences of NATO’s irresponsible refusal to publicly accept its occupying power status is that NATO/ISAF officials can claim that they are not required to comply with Articles 50, 55 and 59 of Section III of the Geneva IV Convention. Those articles obligate NATO to educate all war orphans and feed the civilian population (which it is not doing - 1/3 of the Afghan population is malnourished according to the U.N.’s Food Programme); and NATO is obligated to assign sufficient forces to protect the Afghan population (which it has not done). The requirement of an occupying power to ensure public safety is also a mandate of the Annex to the Hague regulations (See Article 43).

2. ISAF claims it only destroys "abandoned" homes, but it does not define the term. For example, if the occupants have gone to visit a relative, apparently ISAF personnel can consider the home to be abandoned.

3. ISAF claims that it does not bomb a home without first using a loud speaker to tell occupants to leave. The problem is that occupants, especially children, may be too scared to leave. Elderly or hearing impaired occupants might not even hear the announcement. It is not known how many civilian casualties have occurred as a result.

4. ISAF will not admit to the scope of the destructions. There may be hundreds or even thousands of homes that have been destroyed. ISAF refuses to release the apparently embarrassing statistics. In contrast, Israel is condemned if it destroys a single Palestinian home.

5. ISAF vaguely claims that it compensates homeowners, but those statements are suspect. The ISAF Internet website makes no mention of a claims process. How is the Afghan homeowner to know that he or she can even file a claim? There is no transparency. ISAF has refused to release its claims rules or statistics. It may be that 10,000 homes have been destroyed, but only 200 claims filed, with only 50 having been paid. The statistics may very well reveal that the claims process is a farce. In such a situation, the ISAF destructions are almost certainly fueling the insurgency.

6. Finally, ISAF has no verification process for its suspicions. For example, the Israeli Defense Forces know whether explosives were actually in a home they destroy because their armored bulldozers set off the charges. ISAF, by contrast, uses air strikes and artillery to destroy homes, therefore it never knows whether it made a mistake. It may be that 95% of the ISAF home destructions have been unjustified. Such reckless destructions would only be aiding Taliban recruitment.

Regarding all of this, the United Nations is nowhere to be seen. Its arbitrary outrage regarding home destructions remains focused solely against Israel. Serbian officials, who lack influential supporters on the Security Council, are not permitted to violate the Rules of War, but NATO officials can do so with impunity. The same silence emanates from the International Committee of the Red Cross’ President Jakob Kellenberger and his 15-member ICRC Assembly.

Despite a century of efforts to fashion international laws regarding the conduct of warfare, might always manages to triumph over the rule of law and "victors" always seem to decide what is justice. Obeying the rules of war is not simply a moral imperative; it almost always makes good military sense. The irony in Afghanistan is that these seemingly arbitrary and unnecessary home destructions may be fueling the insurgency. If that is the case, NATO may also be destroying its own exit strategy.

Additional Sources of Information: New York Times: "NATO is Razing Booby-Trapped Afghan Homes" November 16, 2010. Washington Post: "U.S. Operations in Kandahar Push Out Taliban" October 25, 2010.

.Note: This reporter contacted NATO’s Headquarters in Kabul and submitted ten questions to its press office regarding the destruction of Afghan homes. He received a somewhat vague response which did not address most of the questions. The response was marked "FOUO" (for official use only) and no specific permission was given to print the response, so it was not included.

Kabul Press would welcome a substantive ISAF response to this article and would print such in its entirely.

Children today are likely to reach old age in a world that is 4C warmer, where the 10,000-year certainties of the global climate can no longer be relied on, and widespread crop failures, drought, flooding and mass migration of the dispossessed become a part of everyday life.

This dire scenario could come as early as the 2060s - well within the lifetime of today's young people. It could mark the point when, for the first time since the end of the Ice Age, human civilisation has to cope with a highly unstable and unpredictable global climate.

A series of detailed scientific assessments of this possible "four-degree world", published today, documents for the first time the immense problems posed if the average global temperature rises by 4C above pre-industrial levels - a possibility that many experts believe is increasingly likely.

The international climate negotiations which resume this week in Cancun, Mexico, are aimed at keeping global temperatures within the "safe" limit of a 2C increase. But many scientists believe that, based on current trends, a rise of 3C or 4C is far more likely.

The greatest concern is that a 4C increase in global average temperatures - a temperature difference as great as that between now and the last Ice Age - would create dramatic transformations in the world, leading to water shortages, the collapse of agriculture in semi-arid regions and triggering a catastrophic rise in sea levels in coastal areas.

One of the studies, led by scientists from the Met Office's Hadley Centre, predicts that, unless there is a concerted international agreement to curb dramatically the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, a 4C warmer world is virtually inevitable by the end of this century. This critical threshold could, however, be reached within just 50 or 60 years based on other factors, such as human interference with natural feedback cycles that accelerate global warming, and the sensitivity of the climate to man-made carbon-dioxide emissions.

"Most emissions scenarios have a chance that take us past the four-degree point by the end of the 21st century, but it is down to the strength of the feedbacks and the sensitivity of the climate as to when this actually happens. It's certainly not outrageous to say it could happen in the 2060s," said Richard Betts, the lead author of the Hadley Centre study, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Of equal concern to scientists is the speed of climate change. A second study in the series found that a global temperature rise of between 2C and 4C could be so rapid that it would coincide with the expected peak in global population, which is expected to reach nine billion by 2050 before it begins to fall.

This would mean that the problems of water shortages and food production caused by climate change will occur at precisely the same time as the world is having to cope with feeding the greatest number of people in its history. A slower rate of climate change, on the other hand, will see the highest temperature increases occurring after the global population has peaked.

Niel Bowerman of Oxford University, who led the study into the rate of climate change, said it highlighted the urgency of having emissions peak in coming years. "Our study shows we need to start cutting emissions soon to avoid potentially dangerous rates of warming within our lifetimes, and to avoid committing ourselves to potentially unfeasible rates of emissions reduction in a couple of decades time," he added.

This week families across the country will be celebrating Thanksgiving—sharing food and telling stories. Here is my story about our food and culture that would be destroyed if Shell Oil gets the permit to drill for oil in our homeland—the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

Since 1986 I lived in Nuiqsut, an Inupiat community on the Beaufort Sea coast of Arctic Alaska. In 1991 I graduated from the University of Washington Medex Northwest Physician Assistant program and was employed as a health aide in Nuiqsut for 14 years. Nearly 8 years ago I helped to found REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands) to represent my interests.

I have raised my family in Nuiqsut. I have one daughter, four sons, two granddaughters, and four grandsons. I live a very traditional lifestyle—hunting, fishing, whaling, gathering, and teaching our family and community members the traditional and cultural activities as my elders taught me. We hunt and eat various birds, including ptarmigan, ducks and geese; fish, including char, salmon, whitefish, dolly varden, grayling, pike, trout, and cisco; land mammals, including caribou, moose and muskox; and marine mammals, including bearded seals, walrus, beluga and bowhead whales. We harvest berries, plants roots and herbs. We work together in harvesting plants and animals.

We have extensive sharing traditions that unite our families and communities. Other communities share their harvest with my family and we share our harvest with others. These sharing patterns have given us much of the variety of foods that we eat. We also share our harvest with those in need.

My mother taught me the land hunting skills that she learned from her parents and family. Other family members taught me how to hunt whales and other marine mammals. I have family ties that bind me to Nuiqsut and other communities in the Arctic, and exposure to hunting and gathering is an important part of these ties.

Whales Give Us Food and Bind Our Communities

Inupiat communities across the Arctic coast of Alaska primarily depend on Bowhead whales for subsistence food and our culture is tied intimately with the whales and the sea. Nuiqsut whalers hunt for bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea during the fall. We await the migration of the whales from Camden Bay for this hunt. The crews go to Cross Island in August. My sons help the crews with their preparation. My ex–husband has gone whaling from Cross Island with his uncle a few times.

Community prayer after a Bowhead whale hunt, Beaufort Sea coast, Kaktovik, Alaska. Photo by Subhankar Banerjee, 2001.

There is a feast in the village after a successful whale hunt. Everyone is invited to the captain’s home to eat whale meat and other food, tea and coffee. I have participated in several of these feasts in Nuiqsut. These feasts are a time of celebration, when stories are told about the hunt.

We have a unique sharing system to divide the harvested whale among the crew striking the whale and the crews helping to land and butcher the whale. The whalers also set aside a portion of the whale meat to share with those in need. Part of the catch is saved for feasting. We share the feast three times during a year, at the blanket toss—a traditional celebration during the summer, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sharing of the whale binds our communities. Whale meat feeds families throughout the long, dark winter, and provides nourishment, warmth and fuel for our daily activities during the Arctic winter.

The foods we eat are important to our lives and health. We have activities associated with our harvesting throughout the year, such as skin sewing, sinew preparation, and craft making. The teaching of the activities and stories continues throughout the year with each generation sharing family hunting stories.

Shell’s Drilling Plan Will Affect Wildlife That We Depend On For Survival

Shell’s proposals to drill for oil and gas in the Chukchi and Beaufort Sea are detrimental to the traditional and cultural activities of our family and village. We depend on traditional foods that migrate through both Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Any harm from Shell’s activities to our resources, including bowhead whales, seals, fish and caribou, threatens our food and our health.

I am concerned that Shell’s exploration drilling, icebreaking, aircraft and helicopter flights, and other noisy activities in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas will keep whales from their feeding areas or otherwise harm them. Any changes in the whale populations could affect our hunting. We educate our families that a whale hunt must be respectful and quiet. If the noise from Shell’s drilling and icebreaking causes whales to be farther offshore, I am concerned that this would place more wear on our equipment and put the whalers at greater risk. We have been taught not to put things in the water that may cause the whales to turn away from the hunting grounds. I fear that water discharges from drillships or the presence of drilling muds in the water where Shell conducts its activities could cause whales to avoid our hunting grounds.

If the whale hunts are less successful, I fear that the community will suffer, as it has in the past during times of shortage. To give an example, in the early 1990s there was seismic activities and exploration drilling in Camden Bay that severely affected our whaling. The following winter, I heard of an unusually high rate of domestic violence in Nuiqsut and increases in suicide attempts and in suicides. I heard of and witnessed increases in drug and alcohol use as well. As a community health aid, I listened to people’s stories of how difficult it was to hunt without success. That winter was the worst I spent as a community health aide and the experience prompted me to speak out at meetings about oil development.

We also depend on caribou for our subsistence food. I am concerned that helicopters and aircraft associated with Shell’s offshore drilling will affect caribou along the coast, and make the caribou avoid hunting areas, including traditional migratory routes and areas used for insect relief.

Due to ongoing oil development on land caribous are already affected. We have a hunting cabin 8 miles from Nuiqsut. This cabin is across the river from the Alpine oilfield, and the activity levels around the cabin are so high that we travel up fish creek and other tributaries, away from the cabin, in order to hunt geese and caribou. I feel that the overflights have caused the caribou to avoid the area near our hunting cabin. My second youngest son was brought to the same area where his dad hunted his first caribou. My son shot a caribou there, but the wounded animal fled from a helicopter that was flying overhead, and moved into a water filled gravel pit, created for development of the Alpine oilfield, and drowned where we could not get to it. The loss of that caribou eliminated my son’s desire to attempt to hunt for the rest of the summer.

Oil and Gas Activities Threaten Our Traditional Way Of Life

I embrace the traditional and cultural activities that I learned from my elders and extended family members. Sharing and passing these traditions onto my children, grandchildren and families is very important to me. I fear that industrial oil and gas activities, including those put forward in Shell’s drilling plans, are changing our natural environment and thereby affecting my ability to live, share, and pass on our traditional way of life. Increased contact with unnatural activities causes a cascade of reactions. Taking the next generation hunting and fishing in areas that now feature signs and sounds of industrial activity—gravel placement, flight activity, personnel activity—is not the same.

I have seen first hand how the Alpine oilfield affected our cultural camp at Nigliq and on the Colville River. There is a growing need to work in cultural camps that teach the next generation our hunting traditions. But teaching the young harvesters our traditions is getting harder because of oil and gas development that drives animals away from our camp. For example, the caribou herds are kept miles away by traffic, including freighter flights, helicopters, and airboats. When industrial activities that conflict with traditional and cultural activities are permitted to dominate our landscape, traditional usage of the areas that has persisted for generations loses out to expanding oil and gas infrastructure.

The disconnect between our concerns and continual government permitting of oil and gas activities in our region is stark. Generations of our people have discussed and put together comments, mitigation measures, restrictions, and prevention attempts. Yet the government has not prevented the loss of traditional and cultural activities, impacts that the Council on Environmental Quality for the Bush administration told us were illegal. State and Federal Governments push the permitting process without looking at the losses created for us. We pushed for deferral and permanent restrictions of industrial activities during our whaling at Cross Island and we were kept out of meetings that changed these discussions. That also was illegal, yet the Obama administration has only allowed industrial activities to continue. National Marine Fisheries Service has stated that oil and gas activities should be postponed until baseline data could be obtained. Yet no new information exists to guide decisions. We fought for restrictions that were not honored.

Words on papers create real loss to our stomachs and the rest of the process of sharing, teaching, celebrating, and learning. Hotdogs offered by industry in their meetings cannot replace the loss of our traditional and cultural foods and activities.

When Will The Government Honor Our Concerns?

Rosemary Ahtuangaruak testifies at Secretary Salazar’s hearing on 5–Year Offshore Oil Leasing, Anchorage, Alaska, April 2009

Earlier this month there were federal government hearings in several Inupiat communities including Barrow, Kotzebue, Point Hope, Point Lay and Wainwright to hear our concerns about Shell’s Arctic drilling. I attended the hearing in Barrow, where I’ve been living since May of this year. We had about 60 people attend the Barrow hearing and overwhelmingly the statements were in opposition to Shell’s drilling plan. The hearing showed the continued concerns of the lack of ability to respond to a spill, lack of taking the concerns of the people into meaningful consultation, the lack of willingness to protect our traditional and cultural activities, and the continued stress and strain this is causing to our people. The risks of the process stay with us and the benefits are taken elsewhere. None of it is worth the risk to harvesting, sharing, celebrating, consuming, teaching, constructing crafts, preparing foods, planning, feasting, dancing, and singing.

Oil companies have a long tradition of making promises and then breaking them by cutting costs to increase profits. Recently I read about a detailed study reported in The New York Times that concluded, “Arctic is not ready for such deep–sea drilling operations.” This is very worrisome for me. But I don’t need to know this from The New York Times—I live here in the Arctic and I know how dangerous it would be to drill for oil in the frozen Arctic Seas.

We want to be Inupiat into the future not just residents in an industrialized area destroyed by Shell’s offshore oil drilling. Our animals, land and seas in the Arctic are already severely stressed by climate change. We don’t want Shell’s dangerous offshore drilling to add to our difficulties. I urge President Obama to hear our concerns and deny Shell the permit to drill for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

Rosemary Ahtuangaruak is an Inupiaq activist. She is a graduate of the University of Washington Medex Northwest Physician Assistant Program. She has fought tirelessly for the health and protection of her people and of the Arctic’s unparalleled wilderness that has sustained her culture for thousands of years. Rosemary is a former mayor of Nuiqsut and currently serves on the board of the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, the regional tribal government for the North Slope, and is an executive council member of the Alaska Inter–Tribal Council. She received the 2009 Voice of the Wild Award from the Alaska Wilderness League. She is a founding board member of REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands).

Copyright 2010 Rosemary Ahtuangaruak

This article was first published in climatestorytellers.org and reposted here with the kind permission of its editor Subhankar Banerjee.

On the way to participate in a rally organized by the international peasant group Via Campesina in Cancun, a Bolivian indigenous farmer took some coca leaves out of his hand-woven satchel and pressed them into my hand. "You will need these during the climate talks in Cancun to keep you from getting tired or hungry," he insisted. "Pachamama -- mother earth -- gives us these leaves. She takes care of us if we take care of her." Bonding as we chewed the bitter leaves together, the wizened Bolivian farmer shared his hopes that the negotiators would listen to his president, Evo Morales, and come up with an accord that would allow the world to live in harmony with nature.

The climate agreement that was ultimately hashed out in Cancun did not reflect the viewpoint of Bolivia's indigenous community, their President Evo Morales, or Bolivia's passionate UN negotiator, Pablo Solon. The Bolivian government and its grassroots allies wanted a binding agreement that would force significant reductions in greenhouse gases. They wanted an agreement that respected indigenous rights. They wanted an agreement grounded in a new concept -- the rights of nature -- that acknowledges that she who gives us life and abundance (and coca leaves) has as much right to exist as humans.

Many mainstream environmentalists were quick to defend the Cancun agreement, insisting that that a weak agreement is better than nothing, since it allows the international process to go forward and allows activists to keep fighting for better outcomes in the future rounds, including at next year's talks that will take place in Durban, South Africa. No agreement, they suggest, would have stopped the process cold.

But we should be clear that the minimalist agreement from Cancun is totally inadequate to address the climate crisis. It acknowledges that deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required, but does not set binding targets. This is due, in large part, to the refusal of the United States -- from the time of the Kyoto Accords -- to agree to mandatory cuts.

The agreement sets up a much-needed Green Climate Fund to help poor nations obtain clean technologies but does not lay out clear sources of financing or how the fund will be controlled. The governments agreed to give an interim trustee role to the World Bank, a move that angered groups in the global south that have suffered at the hands of Bank and activists who have opposed the Bank on a policy level.

The agreement embraces a policy on "deforestation mitigation" known as REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries. This gives polluters in the north a chance to buy carbon credits for protecting forests in the global south. Bolivia, and most organizations on the ground and in the streets of Cancun for the past two weeks, object to REDD on the grounds that it commodifies the forests of the global South, endangers indigenous control over the forests and their right to livelihood, and allows northern polluters to keep polluting. Bolivian negotiator Pablo Solon said handing out carbon credits for protecting forests makes it easier for industrialized nations to achieve their emissions reductions targets without taking domestic action to rein in greenhouse gases. "We want to save the forest, but not save developed countries from the responsibility to cut their emissions," Solon said.

At the 11^th hour, the negotiators -- desperate for an agreement -- were annoyed at what they saw as Bolivia's obstructionism. "The experts that know about climate change know that we are right," Solon insisted. "This agreement won't stop temperature from rising by 4 degrees Celsius, which is just not sustainable. But they just want an agreement, any agreement, so they are pushing this through." While inside the confines of Cancun's Moon Palace Bolivia was left isolated, outside Bolivia was seen as the superhero standing up for the poor, the indigenous communities, and the rights of nature. 

Addressing a news conference in Cancun on December 9, Bolivian President Evo Morales -- himself an indigenous former coca farmer -- made some dire forecasts. "We came to Cancún to save nature, forests, planet Earth, not to convert nature into a commodity or revitalize capitalism with carbon markets." He predicted that without strong, mandatory emissions reductions, the world's governments would be "responsible for ecocide".

I think Evo and my Bolivian coca farmer friend would agree that if we are to avoid ecocide, we cannot rely on government officials meeting in plush golf resorts. Instead, the solutions will come from organic farmers and social entrepreneurs. They will come activists who confront corporate polluters. They will come from passionate environmentalists putting even more pressure on their governments. They will come from those fighting for climate justice on their communities around the globe. Ultimately, they will come from a grassroots global movement steeped in the values of mother nature.

Why does so much of our political and social discourse devolve into extreme positions with little or no ability for each side to hear the other?  Why are we continually reacting to conflict in the same unproductive or destructive ways? Given the multitude of challenges facing us and our planet, it’s time to break this reactive and futile cycle.  As Albert Einstein so eloquently observed, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.” The urgency of finding that “new type of thinking” cannot be overstated.

As a psychotherapist and a human rights activist working for over twenty-five years with thousands of people on four continents, I witness these patterns of reactive behavior everywhere; and I have become intimately aware of their underlying causes. Gratefully, I have also seen our great capacity to break through these destructive patterns when provided with the necessary knowledge and tools.  We can move past divisive obstructions when we become mindful of what is blocking us, and step up to the next level of our evolution – awareness.

Recently, neuroscientists have shed more light on our physiological mechanisms and have helped to explain why our conflicts can become so intractable.  Advancements in brain scanning technology have revealed that many of our adult emotions, thoughts and actions arise from neural pathways that were created and deeply ingrained in us when we were young children.

Ninety percent of human-brain growth occurs in the first five years of life.  During this critical developmental period, life experiences determine how the millions of neurons in the human brain connect. These connections form the structure of our brains, which in turn create our minds.  Hence, our early life experiences shape our minds and define our individual beliefs and values — who we are.  While genetics plays a significant role, our experiences are responsible for how the genes are expressed, because our experiences actually shape our brain structure.

As we continue to grow, our tendency is to filter new information and experiences through our initial sets of beliefs and values.  We develop patterns in our brains that determine how we perceive and respond to our world. These patterns are relatively fixed and will tend to stay that way unless and until repeated new experiences restructure the brain, and thereby change the mind. For example, if a child is raised by racist parents, his brain structure becomes wired to think and feel racism.  The child’s view can change, however, if he is actively exposed to tolerance.
 
By adulthood, our worldview is so fixed that most people don’t even know that there is another way to be.  We become emotionally attached to our points of view, since they represent and order our reality. Our egos may perceive any challenge as life threatening. When in conflict, our defense mechanisms trigger, and negate or deflect opposing points of view in order to maintain our own reality. For example, many dismiss those who hold creationist beliefs as uneducated or irrational, while Creationists, in turn, label Evolutionists as heretics.  Few among either group engage in objective inquiry to understand the other. In fact, our differences are due to the fixed nature of our brains.  This set pattern is the primary source of our divisive conflicts.

To further complicate matters, these unconscious tendencies to feel threatened leave many people open to manipulation by the demagogues of the day.  The results of the recent elections are a perfect example. Driven by irrational fear, millions of citizens were led to vote against their own interests, prompting confused, frustrated and angry reactions from the other side. 

Since rational arguments do not assuage fear (because fear trumps our higher reasoning) continuing to get angry and frustrated at people and dismissing them as irrational or stupid does not change the landscape or serve us as a whole.  It only leads to a perpetual reactive pattern, one that does not allow for new creative solutions.

So how do we move forward?

The answer lies in the brain’s ability to restructure itself when consistently stimulated by new experiences. This relatively new finding has revitalized neuroscience medicine.  Through implementing certain rigorous and intense physical rehabilitation practices, for example, stroke victims and those with traumatic brain injuries have been able to successfully repattern the neurons in their brains. Many patients return to optimum physical health. On the mental health side, studies on long-term meditation practices have shown that mindfulness also changes the brain’s structure, shifting people to become more clear, peaceful and compassionate.

These new findings can now be useful for all of us. By becoming more mindful, we are able to intercept our habitual thought patterns, disconnect from our emotional attachments to our points of view, objectively examine and test our views’ validities in larger contexts, and override these patterns with other perspectives if necessary.  The more aware we become in our daily lives, the better able we are to catch our early preprogrammed patterns and replace them with more constructive approaches to our conflicts.

How can we apply this ability to help us on a collective level? How can our greater awareness reduce the divisiveness and reactivity of others? There is no quick fix here! However, continuing to meet others on their levels of reactivity only serves to fuel the cycles and gets us nowhere.   Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.  The only solution is for more and more of us to try and understand the role we play in perpetuating the cycle, and become aware of how we can respond differently to conflict.

Too often, one side pulls and the other side pulls harder, hence, we devolve to extremes, and conflict becomes unhealthy.  Awareness of reactivity gives us the ability to stop pulling blindly, and pause long enough to evaluate the bigger picture so that we may address our conflicts from broader perspectives.  The great conflict-resolution expert, Bill Ury, calls this The Third Side. With awareness of how this system operates in ourselves, we can create more balanced, constructive responses that do not drive the other side further into their entrenched beliefs and away from our common goals.

In my practice, I have experienced great success with these awareness techniques, particularly when working with warring couples. I help them to become aware, and to rewire their early childhood patterns. Breakthroughs in neuroscience have given me a deeper understanding of why my practices work, and have inspired me to create a tool that can affect these changes and reach many more people.
 
This tool is an iPhone application called AWARENESS, which randomly intercepts users several times a day and asks them what they are feeling in the moment; and then follows up by also asking them to document what they are doing while they are present to their emotions. Based on their answers, the app treats users to a brief video meditation exercise.  This momentary interruption, repeated over time, begins to recondition the users’ minds to become more aware of their emotional states and helps them release those emotions more constructively.  Over time and with dedicated use, this tool can free us from our reactive patterns and helps us become more objective so that we are better able to generate new creative responses.

AWARENESS is the first tool in what I hope will be a new frontier for forwarding humanity’s consciousness. We need neuroscientists, biologists, social scientists and technology experts to collaborate on developing new tools and practices that can be applied in various ways to free us from our reactive patterns.

At this juncture of human evolution, it is incumbent on us to step out of our habitual counter-productive patterns and create new, out of the box solutions.  This will require a willingness to challenge our preexisting perceptions and open our minds to the higher level of thinking that Albert Einstein called for so many years ago.  When we know what we are up against, we humans have demonstrated an indomitable and awe-inspiring ability to step up and triumph over the most difficult of challenges.  For the sake of future generations, we now need to find constructive ways to transcend our differences.

Cancún, Mexico - As the sun rose over Cancún early Saturday morning, an agreement was reached at the COP 16. Nations lauded the work of the Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa, Mexican President of the COP 16, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon. They received a standing ovation at the end of the plenary.

Some touted the last minute agreement, arguing that it had reignited the UNFCCC process. Others argued that while it might have saved the UNCCC process, it had not saved the climate. And yet another group pointed out the myriad ways that the new Cancún Agreement had trammeled numerous tenets of the UNFCCC, as texts emerged through back room negotiations, and were thus not inclusive and transparent. Moreover, Bolivia's refusal to sign on to the agreement were overrun, thwarting the stipulated consensus decision-making process.

So what does the new Cancún agreement contain? How does it compare with the Kyoto Protocol? With the Copenhagen Accord? And how are various nations, nation groups and NGOs responding to it?

The UNFCCC negotiations in Cancún sought to achieve three goals: 1. to establish greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions commitments; 2. To secure funding and technology from developed countries for developing countries, to help them adapt to climate change; and 3. To decide on a method for monitoring, reporting and verifying (MRV) the agreed upon targets. So how did nations do on these three goals?

In essence, the Cancun Agreement agreed to emissions reductions of 25 to 40 percent based on 1990 levels by 2020; it secured emissions reductions commitments from both developed and developing nations; it set up a climate fund but did not establish new funding; it worked to smooth the way for technology transfer; and it set up mechanisms to ensure transparency in reporting and monitoring.

Gordian Knot

The final days of the COP 16 were marked by a stalmate between those countries who were supportive of extending the Kyoto Protocol and the Copenhagen Accord. The Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012, puts the burden on developed nations, such as the U.S., to make emissions reductions. Nation groups, such as the G77, Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the European Union (EU) - in other words the majority of the countries -- sought to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

The work of the Mexican negotiating team was thus clearly to cut through what U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern referred to as the "Gordian Knot" of those who wanted to extend Kyoto and those who were keen to implement the Copenhagen Accord.

The Mexican delegates decided that the best method for making progress on the matter was to invite a handful of countries to participate in negotiations. Figueriedro of Brazil and Christopher Huhn of the United Kingdom led the negotiations and, according to Stern, "about 12 countries," which included "both major and minor countries" took part in the discussions, held during the last day of the summit and lasting about twelve hours. They were responsible for drafting the new agreement, which was then brought to the two working groups for discussion.

This meeting was not the only backroom meeting of select countries convened to address particular matters and it was these backroom deals that angered Bolivia so much because it violated the UNFCCC's guiding principles of inconclusiveness and transparency. Bolivia argued that in form, agreements put forward for discussion had to come through the UNFCCC's two working groups and not emerge through backroom discussions.

Other countries decided that making progress, any amount of progress, took precedence. They feared that not having any results emerge from this year's summit would put the entire UNFCCC process into question. And they argued it would do even less to avert climate change.

Cancún Agreement -- Mitigation and Emissions Reductions

What does the Cancún Agreement achieve? First, it's important to know that it is not a legally binding international agreement. It does, however, pave the way for a global treaty to be agreed upon and implemented. This work will undoubtedly form the centerpiece of next year's summit.

In terms of mitigations or action needed to avert climate change, the Cancún agreement explicitly states that emissions should not allow temperature increases to rise above 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a temperature that is commonly agreed by the worldwide scientific community as the threshold above which the consequences of climate become irreversible.

Hedegaard touted the inscription of the 2.0 maximum in the agreement, stating "for the first time, the pledges 2.0 is acknowledged in a UN document and the pledges are documented; and we acknowledge that we are not there yet." 

The door has been left open for a review to bring the limit down to 1.5 degrees. Many African nations have called for a 1.5 degree limit, since temperature disproportionately affects the region: a 2.0 degree temperature increase elsewhere equals a 3.0 temperature increase in Africa.

Additionally, the Cancún agreement seeks emissions reductions of 25-40 percent from 1990, which is in agreement with what the worldwide scientific community has called for. The agreement seeks commitments from all nations, that is, from both developed and developing nations.

In this way, it brings together the Kyoto Protocol, which sought commitments from developed nations and was signed onto by 37 nations, and the Copenhagen Accord, which sought commitments from developing nations and had 55 signatories.

Since the Copenhagen Accord commitments were entirely voluntary and neither the Copenhagen Accord nor the Cancún Agreement is legally binding, these pledges at present cannot be enforced. This remains to be worked out.

Earlier this year, countries were asked to submit commitments for the Copenhagen Accord by January 31, 2010 and appear as the Accord's Appendix I. A list of countries and their commitments can be found here.

The reduction commitments made in the Copenhagen Accord are thus now anchored in the COP framework and part of the UNFCCC process. Their inclusion was of keen interest to the United States, which has been working tirelessly over the last year for their recognition and implementation.

Stern acknowledged that there were "quite different views with respect to the anchoring of pledges of the Copenhagen Accord." Many nations opposed their inclusion, since the Copenhagen Accord was a backroom deal that did not emerge from the working groups.

Countries are to develop low carbon development plans and strategies and decide how best to implement them. For developed nations, the options can include market mechanisms. For developing nations, mitigation will be matched by funding and technology.

Funding

The negotiations also sought to secure funding, in order to help developing nations adapt to the consequences of climate change, which disproportionately hit them harder. The commitments from Copenhagen were repeated: $30 billion dollars in fast track funding for three years, 2010-2012; and $100 billion in long-term funding to be raised by 2020.

The Cancún Agreement establishes a Green Climate Fund under the Conference of the Parties, which will be run by a board consisting of equal representation from developed and developing countries. It will not be run by the World Bank, which was of concern particularly to developing nations, who have often had negative experiences with the World Bank.

Mark Stevenson of the AP challenged U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern in a press conference to explain how the agreement was a success in terms of funding: "You have started a Green Fund with no funding ... How can you call this a success? Could give us a small resume of what additional funding the United States pledged here in Cancún?"

Stern responded that "we do have new funding. We are part of the fast start pledge from last year, which carries for three years. The first year was 2010, then there's 2011 and 2012." Yet his answer belies the problem: funding from last year is not quite new funding.

A Technology Executive Committee and a Climate Technology Center and Network were also set up. They are intended to help transfer technology from developed nations to developing nations, in order to help the latter address and adapt to climate change. Discussions were stuck on questions of patents involved in international technology transfers.

Enforcing Pledges

Lastly, the Cancún Agreement negotiated a way to monitor, report and verify (MRV) pledges made. Having transparency in this area was particularly important to the United States. Developed nations are to report their emissions inventories annually and developing nations are to report their inventories every two years.

REDD

Additionally, the UN program to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation was going to go ahead. The controversial program ostensibly seeks to curb emissions from deforestation by providing developing nations with financial aid, if they do not chop down their forest. Trees soak up C02 emissions when standing, but inversely when chopped down release them into the air.

Opponents argue that rampant abuses exist, since the program does not provide enough oversight. A key tenet of the agreement coming out of the World People's Conference on Climate Change, convened by President Evo Morales in Bolivia in April, opposed REDD. Numerous NGOs participating in this year's COP 16 took a stance against REDD through actions and panels. Forested areas are mostly inhabited by indigenous peoples, who are therefore impacted intensely.

Bolivia

Bolivian lead climate negotiator Pablo Solón refused to sign on to the agreement, saying it condemns humankind to 4.0 temperature increases and would doom millions living in the most impoverished and vulnerable nations. COP 16 President Espinosa overrode his protests, stating that she would note his concerns but that the consensus process did not allow one person to hold up the support of the other countries.

Response from NGOS

Friends of the Earth International called the agreement a slap in the face, and warned that it could still lead to a temperature rise of 5C. "In the end, all of us will be affected by the lack of ambition and political will of a small group of countries. The US, with Russia and Japan, are to blame for the lack of desperately needed greater ambition," said Nnimmo Bassey, Friends of the Earth's international director.

Rose Braz, from Center for Biological Diverstiy, said: "While the Cancun agreement moves the process forward, it doesn't move the process forward boldly or quickly enough. In Cancun, led by the U.S., countries refused to even acknowledge the gap between the cuts pledged in Copenhagen and the cuts to global warming pollution science requires, let alone establish a concrete process to close that huge gap. Today, the planet remains on a course for warming of over 3.5º C (6.3º F) -- a truly horrifying prospect."

On Friday, NASA announced that 2010 is set to be the warmest year on record. The next Conference of the Parties is scheduled to take place in Durban, South Africa, from 28 November to 9 December 2011.

 

Officially it's not even winter yet, but freakish 60-mile-an-hour blizzards and frigid temperatures have already walloped the Pacific Northwest, while record a-foot-in-a-day snows hit the Northern Plains and Rockies. With improbable weather becoming routine, forecasters may be in for another wild ride this winter.

There's no way of knowing exactly when or where extreme cold or heavy snow is going to hit during the next three months, but the forecast does call for a 100 percent chance of someone -- most likely a Republican who wants to gut environmental regulation -- seizing on such weather as proof that the planet isn't warming.

Last February, as the snow just kept piling up in Washington, D.C., Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and his family built an igloo down the street from the Capitol and labeled it "Al Gore's new home." And the Virginia Republican Party ran TV ads telling viewers to call legislators who supported climate-change legislation "and tell them how much global warming you get this weekend. Maybe they'll come help you shovel."

Of course, the "Snowmageddon" jokesters had no way of knowing at the time that within less than five months the snowshoe would be on the other foot. By early July, with much of North America broiling in record-shattering heat, most climate-change holdouts were keeping a low profile. (But not Inhofe, who defiantly lectured a sweating ABC News team, "We're in a cycle now that all the scientists agree is going into a cooling period.")

Meanwhile, some environmental groups pointed to the blistering July temperatures as confirmation that we've headed over the cliff of global climate change. The National Wildlife Foundation rushed out a report supplement titled "Extreme Heat in Summer 2010: A Window on the Future," filling it with pictures of sweating city-dwellers and hot-colored charts. The Natural Resources Defense Council put out a press release in which its climate-center director announced, "Welcome to what might be termed 'the dark side of climate change.'"

Back in the 1990s, the major environmental groups made a decision not to highlight extreme weather events as early signs of global warming. Should they have stuck to that policy? When heatwaves, droughts and floods are exhibited as evidence of climate disruption, does it make it that much easier for people like Inhofe to whip up more confusion the next time a winter storm hits? Is there any cool-headed way to talk about the crazy climate of recent years?

The odds on odd weather

Given the complexity of climate science, it's not surprising that the best way to get the attention of the media and the public is to talk about exceptional weather that's happening right now rather than the bigger threat of long-term climate disruption. But that makes life difficult for those who study climate for a living.

One such researcher is Katharine Hayhoe, an associate professor at Texas Tech University. She sees a clear necessity to come back hard against fatuous arguments that, she says, go something like, "Well, you know, temperatures are cooling in the month of September in Erie, Pennsylvania, so how can the planet be warming?" But, she warns, climate scientists have to be careful themselves not to go beyond the data: "It is very tempting to seize on a single dramatic event, but we have to stay true to what we know, to stick to terms like 'consistent with' and 'risk of.'"

In public statements, most climate scientists are indeed careful to stress that we cannot draw conclusions from individual extreme weather events. But Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, is now thinking such caution may have gone too far.

He says many of his colleagues, weary of being attacked by people like Inhofe, tend to "jump too soon," starting their responses to reporters by discounting the relevance of individual weather events. But by understating the links, he believes, they are "erring in the opposite direction," which in itself can be misleading. "Statistics show very much that these events really are part of bigger trends," he stresses.

To illustrate, Mann uses a metaphor popular among climate researchers these days: "Suppose you're betting on dice, but that someone had replaced the five on this particular die with a second six. If you don't know this, you might get cheated out of a lot of money. But when you demand your money back, can you point to any one roll of that die that you can prove lost you money? No, you can't." But, he says, it's a fact that the size of your losses is a direct result of the change in the die.

Similarly with the Earth's atmosphere, he says, statistics tell us that shifts in climate have contributed to extreme weather: "As the numbers start piling up, you can say that the numbers have been shifted by climate change. A 1,000-year event becomes a 30-year event."

To follow year-to-year climatic trends through the centuries before weather data were being recorded, scientists like Mann can use indicators like tree rings. But it is usually impossible, he says, to detect trends in shorter-term climatic extremes that occurred in the distant past.

On the other hand, daily weather data that have been recorded for 50, 100, or more years in many places can tell us a lot about extremes. And, says Mann, "When extreme events that actually occurred are the ones you'd expect based on climate-change models, you have a lot more confidence."

"If we were seeing a lot of longer, more intense cold periods, we'd all be scratching our heads. But when you confirm what the hypothesis proposed, you have an increased degree of confidence."

And confidence is increasing. Last year, 15 climate scientists published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that contained this straightforward statement, based on the most recent Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): "It is now more likely than not that human activity has contributed to observed increases in heat waves, intense precipitation events, and the intensity of tropical cyclones."

Furthermore, even on a warming planet, regions with traditionally cold winters will still have plenty of below-freezing weather; when that cold air combines with moist air masses (in a generally warmer atmosphere that's able to carry more water vapor than it used to), a lot of moisture can suddenly get dumped in the form of snow.

Hayhoe helped write a June 2009 report published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program finding that the share of precipitation falling as snow rather than rain is increasing in the northeastern United States. Furthermore, said the report, "Heavy snowfall and snowstorm frequency have increased in many northern parts of the United States." Six months later, with the northern and middle Atlantic coast paralyzed by record snowfall, Hayhoe and her co-authors could be even more confident that the trend they had observed was not a mirage.

But if climate models project with some assurance that present and future emissions of greenhouse gases will lead to rapid warming of the atmosphere and extreme weather, is it even necessary to continue digging into past climate and weather records for evidence of change? Do historical studies add any useful information as we plan for the future?

Sixteen scientists who contributed to a 2008 report for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program stressed that while the past does not hold all the answers, it is important to learn what it can tell us. The first step, they explain, is "detection" -- establishing that changes have occurred in some type of extreme, say heat waves, over time. Then comes the second step, "attribution":

Attribution further links those changes with variations in climate forcings, such as changes in greenhouse gases, solar radiation, or volcanic eruptions ... Attribution often uses quantitative comparison between climate-model simulations and observations, comparing expected changes due to physical understanding integrated in the models with those that have been observed.

Such a comparison can be seen in graphs plotted by University of Oklahoma researchers. In them, an index including several kinds of extreme climate events can be seen increasing over recent decades in a way that can't be explained by natural variation. But when greenhouse emissions are included in climate models, observation and theory align very well.

When extreme heat becomes routine

If last summer's brain-cooking heat seemed to be unusually persistent, it wasn't just your fevered imagination. Weather records show that occurrences of two-day and three-or-more-day-long runs of exceptionally high temperatures have been increasing steadily since 1960. The trend toward more extra-hot days, and especially extra-warm nights, has been strongest, as we'd expect, in urban areas where concrete and asphalt trap heat and vegetation is sparse. But rural areas and suburbs have also seen increases.

A half-century ago, record high and record low temperatures occurred at approximately the same rate in the United States. Now record highs are happening at least twice as often as record lows, and the ratio might be as high as four-to-one.

One link between heat waves and human-induced warming of the atmosphere is simply a matter of statistics. Daily temperatures are distributed like most phenomena, in a bell-shaped curve, with most readings heaped up in the middle, near the average for the date, and the rarer extremes tapering away in both directions as "tails." As the earth warms, that curve tends to shift to the right, toward higher temperatures, with its right tail leading the way.

Even if the bell curve stays exactly the same shape as it moves, a small shift can lead to many more heat waves. Notes Michael Mann, "The one-degree Celsius increase we have seen in average temperature, for example, appears to be leading to a doubling of the rate at which record-breaking temperatures occur." That happens because as the curve moves right, the "fatter" part of the tail moves into "extreme" territory. The graph below, by IPCC via the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, illustrates the effect of the shift:


But there may be more to the story. The monster heat wave that killed tens of thousands of Europeans in 2003 was off the charts -- impossible to explain by a simple shift in the bell curve, according to a Swiss climate team. The group reported a few months after the disaster that even considering the increase in average temperatures in Europe from 1990 to 2003 -- but assuming no change in the shape of the curve -- a heat wave like that of 2003 could be expected to occur only once every 46,000 years.

The fact that the 2003 event really did happen led them to search for other explanations in greenhouse climate models. Those models, they discovered, predict a large increase not only in average temperature but in variability as well -- a flattening of the bell curve like the one illustrated in the IPCC graph below -- that would make killer heat waves much more common in, say, Switzerland.


Indeed, the Swiss scientists' models suggest that in Central Europe "toward the end of the century -- under the given scenario assumptions -- about every second summer could be as warm or warmer (and as dry or drier) than 2003."

While not as wildly unpredictable as Europe '03, the 2010 killer heat wave in Russia went well beyond anything else yet experienced and might also be an indicator of a flattening bell curve.

"The heat in Russia and the floods in Pakistan in the past year were not just weather flukes," adds Mann. Greenhouse models, he points out, projected that sinking dry air would migrate from northern Africa and southern Europe toward Central Europe and Russia in summer, and that moist air would move north from the tropical Indian Ocean toward subtropical Pakistan. "Those events were part of a larger circulation pattern," he says.

Extreme rains, extraordinary snow

In recent years, precipitation patterns appear to have gone haywire, not just in Pakistan but on every continent. Katharine Hayhoe has seen this up close: "In the five years I've lived in West Texas, we've had a 111-day rainless stretch -- the longest ever recorded -- and two '100 year' rainfalls" -- ones so heavy that such an event occurs only once per century on average.

"But," she says, "it all makes sense from a basic physics perspective. The atmosphere is holding more water vapor. Storm systems, when they come, have more to work with."

Warmer air is capable of holding more water vapor than is cooler air. As a consequence, the concentration of moisture in the atmosphere also has been increasing since the '60s, both in the United States and across the globe. A comprehensive 2007 study led by Katharine Willett, now at Yale University, concluded that the increases in humidity observed planet-wide can be attributed to human influence and that natural forces alone cannot explain the change.

With more moisture in the air, an increasing proportion of precipitation is coming in the form of more intense rainstorms around the world. Over the past 30 years, the southeastern United States has seen simultaneous increases in droughts, wet years, and strong rainstorms. These big swings in precipitation are related to the continuing rise in Atlantic Ocean surface temperatures and the increasing variability of those temperatures. The ocean temperature increase has been attributed to greenhouse emissions; the degree to which emissions affect variability in surface temperatures is less well understood.

Numbers of years with extremely high snowfall totals have declined since the 1950s over much of the country. That was to be expected, because with climate change, weather cold enough for snow is now even more rare in warm regions like the Southeast.

However, extremes follow a different pattern from totals. There has been a slight upward trend in strong snowstorms over the past century in the United States. What part of that trend you see depends on where you live. Warmer areas of the country are seeing fewer big snowstorms, but the upper Midwest and the Northeast are getting hit with more of them.

Meanwhile, that most media-friendly of all extreme weather phenomena, the hurricane, is probably also the least informative when it comes to the climate debate. Authored by a group of hurricane experts, a paper published earlier this year by Nature Geoscience (subscription) examined all existing evidence of links between greenhouse emissions and Atlantic tropical cyclones.

In contrast to the IPCC report that had concluded it is "more likely than not" that humanity's emissions have influenced tropical cyclone activity, this study found that "despite some suggestive observational studies, we cannot at this time conclusively identify" a human fingerprint on the increasing intensity of tropical cyclones. However, "a substantial human influence on future tropical cyclone activity cannot be ruled out...."

No news is bad news

Whatever happens on the ground, in the sea and in the atmosphere in coming decades, it is very likely that public discussion of the climate will tend to focus on events like heat waves, floods and storms more than on the invisible, and ultimately more important, transformation of the planet-wide climate.

In a 2007 essay, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times explained why storms make headlines but climatic disruption does "not constitute news as we know it":

... the incremental nature of climate research and its uncertain scenarios will continue to make the issue of global warming incompatible with the news process. Indeed, global warming remains the antithesis of what is traditionally defined as news...Journalism craves the concrete, the known, the here and now and is repelled by conditionality, distance, and the future.

But could it be that the kind of energetic public discussion we saw following last winter's Snowmageddon can actually help remedy the situation, by introducing more people to the complex forces that are taking our climate on this wild ride? Do more people now know, for example, that if there is extraordinary weather again this winter, it can be entirely consistent with what we'd expect when living in a warmer, moister atmosphere? Will more of us see in next summer's heatwaves the roll of loaded dice?

When I asked Michael Mann those questions, he chuckled. "Well, yes, I hope the past year has provided a learning opportunity" for Americans.

But will we actually learn from it? On that question, Mann -- who makes his living estimating statistical confidence -- did not seem very confident at all.

Climate change is causing mass loss of glaciers in high mountains worldwide. Within a few decades, melting glaciers could leave arid areas such as Central Asia and parts of the Andes even drier as the ice melts into water and flows downhill, causing disastrous floods in the lowlands, finds a new report by the UN Environment Programme presented today at the UN climate talks in Cancun.

Compiled by UNEP's Polar Research Centre GRID-Arendal and experts from research centers in Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, the report says the larger glaciers may take centuries to disappear but many low-lying, smaller glaciers, which are often crucial water sources in dry lands, are melting much faster.

Glacial melt will change the lives of millions as over half of the world's population lives in watersheds of major rivers originating in mountains with glaciers and snow.

Glaciers in Argentina and Chile, followed by those in Alaska and its coastal mountain ranges, have been losing mass faster and for longer than glaciers in other parts of the world, finds the report, "High Mountain Glaciers and Climate Change - Challenges to Human Livelihoods and Adaptation."

The third fastest rate of loss is among glaciers in the northwest United States and southwest Canada.

Melting more slowly are glaciers in the high mountains of Asia, including the Hindu Kush region of the Himalayas, the Arctic and the Andes.

Europe's glaciers had been growing since the mid-1970s, but they began to lose mass around the year 2000, the report shows.

"These alarming findings on melting glaciers underline the importance of combating climate change globally. It sends a strong message to us as politicians and climate negotiators in Cancun," said Norway's Minister of the Environment and International Development Erik Solheim.

Solheim announced today that Norway will fully fund, with more than US$12 million, the five-year Hindu-Kush-Himalayas Climate Impact Adaptation and Assessment Programme from 2011.

"People in the Himalayas must prepare for a tough and unpredictable future. They need our committed support," said Solheim. "Therefore, Norway will fully fund the brand new five-year program. We see this program as a potent mix of solid climate science, promising intra-regional cooperation and concrete adaptation projects on the ground."

The initiative will be carried out by the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development and UNEP-Grid Arendal.

Overall, the trend is shrinking glaciers, but greater precipitation in some places has increased the mass and the size of glaciers in western Norway, New Zealand's South Island and parts of the Tierra del Fuego in South America.

"Accumulation of science shows us a clear general trend of melting glaciers linked to a warming climate and perhaps other impacts, such as the deposit of soot, reducing the reflection of heat back into space," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said today.

"This report underlines a global trend, observed over many decades now in some parts of the globe, which has short and long-term implications for considerable numbers of people in terms of water supplies and vulnerability," he said.

In dry regions of Central Asia, Chile, Argentina and Peru, where there is little rainfall and precipitation, receding glaciers will have much more impact on the seasonal water availability than in Europe or in parts of Asia, where monsoon rains play a much more prominent role in the water cycle, the report finds.

Some areas are experiencing contradictory effects, according to the report. In smaller areas of Asia's Karakoram range, for example, advancing glaciers have crept over areas that have been free of ice for 50 years. But in Asia's Tianshan and Himalayan mountain ranges, glaciers are receding, and some are shrinking rapidly, causing glacial lakes to burst.

"Without doubt the main driving force behind the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers and formation of the catastrophic Glacial Lake Outburst Floods is warming due to climate change," said Madhav Karki, deputy director general of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development.

"The risk to lives and livelihoods in the fragile Hindu Kush Himalayan region is high and getting higher," said Dr. Karki, expressing thanks to the Norwegian government for its funding of the new adaptation program. "Immediate action by the global community on launching long-term adaptation and resilience-building programs is urgently needed."

In the last 40 years, Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, often called GLOFs, have been increasing, not only in China, Nepal and Bhutan, but also more recently in Patagonia and the Andes.

Five major GLOFs took place in April, October and December 2008 and again in March and September 2009 in the Northern Patagonia Icefield in Chile. On each occasion, the Cachet 2 Lake, dammed by the Colonia Glacier, released around 200 million tonnes of water into the Colonia River. The lake has since rapidly refilled, suggesting high risk of further GLOFs.

There has been a near doubling in the frequency of GLOFs in the Yarkant region of Karakoram, China since 1959, attributed to the warming climate.

In the Lunana region of Bhutan on October 7, 1994, the glacial lake Luggye Tsho burst. The ensuing GLOF, which contained an estimated 18 million cubic meters of water, debris and trees, swept downstream killing more than 20 people, and travelled over 204 kilometers.

"When glaciers disappear, people, livestock, birds and animals will be forced to move," says one of the report's editors, Christian Nellemann of the UNEP/GRID-Arendal research center in Norway. "But ironically, a lot of people die in deserts also from drowning, when increasingly unpredictable rains cause flash floods."

"The impact of floods was brought into sharp relief in Pakistan in August 2010. As of November 2010, over six million people were still being affected by this disaster, with many displaced and housing, livelihoods, crops and livestock lost," said Steiner in his introduction to the report.

Siphoning off the water from overflowing lakes is one adaptive action, successfully carried out at lakes in Peru's Cordillera Blanca. Similar projects have been carried out in the Tsho and Thorthormi Glaciers in Nepal and Bhutan but the cost and technical challenges in remote locations can be high.

The report recommends:

• Strengthening glacial research and trans-national collaboration with emphasis on mass calculation, monitoring and particularly the effects of glacial recession on water resources, biodiversity and availability downstream.


• Improved modeling on precipitation patterns and effects on water availability in particular in mountain regions of Asia and Latin America.


• Prioritizing support to and development of adaptation to water-related disasters.


• Prioritizing programs and support to development and implementation of adaptation strategies for too much and too little water including strengthening the role of women.


• Urgently supporting the implementation and improvement of both small and large-scale water capture and storage systems and improving efficiency of current irrigation systems through the use of green technology and agricultural knowledge.

"If the world is to decisively deal with climate change, we must also address the need for programmes targeted towards adaptation strategies to build long-term resilience. Local people are already having to make tough decisions and choices as the climate around them changes," said Steiner. "It is time for and governments and the international to step up action on cutting emissions and supporting adaptation. This meeting in Cancun is the next opportunity to fast track a response."

The notorious tar sands in Alberta, Canada have long been a source of contention for environmentalists, and rightfully so: Due to the destruction wrought by extracting the oil from the sands and the carbon-intensive refinement processes, this oil is often considered the dirtiest on earth. And we're about to have 900,000 barrels of it flowing through the US every day, through the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. That is, unless Obama takes the advice of the No Tar Sands campaign, and shuts it down.

The Huffington Post has the details:

The pipeline would run from Canada through six US states, to Gulf Coast refineries. Activists are concerned that public water supplies, crops, and wildlife habitats will be at risk when 900,000 barrels a day of dirty oil are transported across our country's heartland.

According to the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund, the President and US Department have the power to require an additional Environmental Impact Assessment. Members of Congress and the EPA have already requested this measure be taken.

The ad campaign will feature TV ads on CNN, MSNBC, and Comedy Central ... The No Tar Sands Oil Campaign is sponsored by an overwhelming number of groups, including Corporate Ethics International, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and Rainforest Action Network.

The fact that this tar sands oil pipeline is something of a harbinger for things to come makes the campaign all the more urgent: As oil stores around the world dry up and offshore drilling becomes more and more dangerous, we'll see more reliance

on harmful tar sands oil

. But instead of continually ratcheting up the risks associated with squeezing every last drop of oil out of the planet, perhaps it's time to take a stand -- and tell the administration to start seriously supporting clean forms of energy.

By Brian Merchant | Sourced from Treehugger

Posted at December 6, 2010,

In most legal systems, you have a right to freedom of speech or religion, but you don’t have a right to breathe clean air or drink safe water.

Maude Barlow—author, activist, and former senior advisor on water to the United Nations—believes that those rights should be recognized. This past summer, she helped engineer a landmark victory: The U.N. formally adopted a resolution recognizing the human right to water (though the United States abstained).

Now, Barlow is part of an international movement—of governments, scientists, and activists—working to bring a focus on environmental rights to the ongoing United Nations climate negotiations. This week, she is attending the United Nations climate meeting in Cancún, Mexico.

The negotiations are thus far getting scant press attention, but thousands of people from all over the world are turning out in Cancún to voice their political views and hold alternative meetings and demonstrations outside the U.N. conference. Early this week, the international grassroots organization La Via Campesina led Barlow and hundreds of other grassroots leaders on a tour across the Mexican countryside to witness how climate change is already affecting rural communities. The tours converged in Mexico City where a few thousand people held a march to the Zócalo, the city’s central plaza.

Activists in Cancún and Mexico City are rallying behind the idea of environmental rights. Many support a document called the “People’s Agreement on Climate Change,” which includes a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.” It’s an idealistic name for a proposal that would sound either visionary or improbable, or both—if not for the fact that the declaration represents the work of representatives from 56 countries and of tens of thousands of people who attended a climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, last April. The document declares that everybody has rights to basics like clean water and clean air, but it also says something even more extraordinary: that the planet’s ecosystems themselves have rights.

It’s unlikely that the Cochabamba proposals will end up in any formal agreements to emerge from Cancún. But the idea of environmental rights is taking hold. In September 2008, Ecuador formally recognized the rights of nature in its new constitution. In the United States, a handful of local governments have passed resolutions recognizing that nature has rights, including, recently, the city of Pittsburgh.

Maude Barlow spoke with me on the phone from Cancún about how the concept of environmental rights might influence climate negotiations.

Madeline Ostrander: You worked hard on promoting the notion that we have a basic human right to water. What happens when we start talking about other environmental issues in terms of human rights?

Maude Barlow: There's no such thing as human rights if we don't protect the Earth that gives us life and if we don't start having respect for other species and for air and water and soil.

Take water, for example, because it's dear to my heart. We've seen water as a resource for our convenience, pleasure, and profit. So, we do whatever we want with it, thinking it's in unlimited supply. We dump poisons into it. We move it from where it is needed for the functioning of healthy hydrologic cycles to where we want it. We dump it into the ocean as waste. We have this worldview that water, air, and ecosystems are merely here to serve us.

That has simply got to end—that notion that that's why the Earth has been put here. There's a new, deep humility that's required of humanity if we’re going to change the tide.

MO: How has the U.N. resolution that recognizes the right to water helped the environmental movement internationally?

MB: The point to the right to water declaration was to link human rights to the Earth. People keep saying, “Well, did anything change the next day for people without water?”

And I say, “Yeah, actually.” I don't mean literally that someone who didn’t have water one day got it the next, but now we have a tool. We now have a binding resolution from the U.N. General Assembly that says that drinking water and sanitation are a fundamental human right. It's a clear, clean statement. It says to governments that you cannot use the water primarily as an economic resource. You now have to see it as a fundamental human right, and your priorities must be to serve the most vulnerable people. We're going to use it as a tool in Canada because our First Nations communities still don't have decent drinking water. Our federal government has abdicated its responsibility to those communities.

MO: Why are the statements about the rights of Earth that emerged from the Cochabamba Agreement so important?

MB: The Cochabamba People’s Agreement is rooted in the notion of social and climate justice, and it questions the whole concept of growth, unregulated trade, and market capitalism.

It says, yes, of course, there’s a place for the economy and trade, but they must serve humanity and communities. It rejects climate offsets very clearly. It talks about the injustice of the Global North to the Global South—that the countries that are feeling the worst impact are the ones that have done the least [to contribute to climate change]. It's based on the notion of human rights and justice and the rights of nature. I don't think it's radical at all in terms of what the world needs, but it's radical compared to the Copenhagen Accord.

I think the most important thing about the Agreement is that, at its core, it says we can't continue with the current policies that dominate, for instance, the G20. On one hand, our governments are saying that they care about the climate and the environment, and then on the other hand, they are promoting international trade and policy agendas that are just devastating to the world. The Cochabamba Agreement says that it's not possible to either cut greenhouse gas emissions or deal with any other crises that are facing humanity and the Earth without challenging the system. That's the motto of our movement: Change the system, not the climate.

MO: Do you still hope that the Cochabamba statement on the rights of Earth will have an influence on climate negotiations?

MB: I think it will, but probably not here. The powerful governments, the Western governments, have decided to put a damper on expectations for this round of negotiations in Cancún. And most of them don't have any intention of honoring very deep commitments. I certainly know Canada doesn't, I don't think the U.S. or Japan does.

That doesn't mean the Cochabamba Accord doesn't matter. The difference between this year and last is that our movement is getting stronger. They expected something like 7,000 to 8,000 people to attend the conference in Bolivia, and 30,000 of us descended on Cochabamba. It was really a wonderful and important gathering. While it may not produce results at the Cancún summit, I think the Cochabamba Accord is the guiding principle for our movement.

MO: What is it your best hope for the Cancún negotiations?

MB: My best hope is not that they come out with a deal; it's that they don't come out with a bad deal. The whole issue of forest restoration—that is a wonderful concept in theory, but the way it's being actualized is really dangerous. It's being used as an offset. You can legally offset your pollution by planting a monoculture forest somewhere that's going to be cut down in 10 years. That offset will allow you to continue bad practices.

I'm worried that they are going to make progress on things that do not fundamentally change or challenge the current system. And then they'll say, "Look how far we've come." When, in fact, it will be steps in the wrong direction. That is my biggest fear.

My biggest hope is that this movement of ours is getting stronger and stronger and that we're being listened to. We have had a number of wins in a number of countries recently and there’s a movement, for instance, from some of the Latin American countries that have endorsed this notion of the rights of nature.

That's not a case of giving up on the U.N. process. I want to be really clear that I think it's the only legitimate process we have. It takes forever. Democracy is slow and plodding and can drive you crazy. But it's the only international process that isn't, yet, driven by corporations. We're really worried that the big countries will say, “We're going to turn [the negotiations] over to the G20.” I think that would be a disaster. It would leave the countries that are suffering the most without restitution.

MO: You've just spent the last few days traveling with activists across the Mexican countryside. How do you think the Mexican perspective might influence the climate movement or the negotiations?

MB: Well, I have long wanted the water movement and the climate movement to get together because I think they should be the same movement.

The tours [led by La Via Campesina] brought members of the international community and Mexicans into local villages and towns throughout Mexico to learn about what's happening on the ground. The idea was, you're really not going to know this in your head; you're going to know it in your heart. We came into communities, and we saw the actual reality of people's lives.

Everybody kept hearing about water. The first face of climate change is the water crisis. People are feeling the water crisis desperately now, in community after community. Maybe a Canadian gold mine has dumped cyanide into the water, and it's poisoned. Maybe a big hydroelectric dam paid for by the World Bank has cut off an entire river. People start to put it together—their own crisis, the fact that they can't grow food any more in their local community, the fact that somehow they have to find the money for bottled water because their kids should not be drinking the local water, the fact that they've lost their local water rights and the best water is being guaranteed to corporations or tourism. This isn't a kind of esoteric thing anymore. This is suddenly real, this understanding of how climate connects to the water crisis and to corporate control.

MO: And the tours ended in a demonstration in Mexico City?

MB: The demonstration was wonderful, it was peaceful, it was joyous. It ended with a declaration of solidarity with all of the international and domestic people there.

Very exciting, very moving, and I think you are going to see a most exciting set of meetings here, and protests, and life coming off the ground here in Cancún.

British scientific experts have made a major breakthrough in the fight to save the natural world from destruction, leading to an international effort to safeguard a global system worth at least $5 trillion a year to mankind.

Groundbreaking new research by a former banker, Pavan Sukhdev, to place a price tag on the worldwide network of environmental assets has triggered an international race to halt the destruction of rainforests, wetlands and coral reefs.

With experts warning that the battle to stem the loss of biodiversity is two decades behind the climate change agenda, the United Nations, the World Bank and ministers from almost every government insist no country can afford to believe it will be unaffected by the alarming rate at which species are disappearing. The Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, later this month will shift from solely ecological concerns to a hard-headed assessment of the impact on global economic security.

The UK Government is championing a new system to identify the financial value of natural resources, and the potential hit to national economies if they are lost. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) project has begun to calculate the global economic costs of biodiversity loss. Initial results paint a startling picture. The loss of biodiversity through deforestation alone will cost the global economy up to $4.5trn (£2.8trn) each year -- $650 for every person on the planet, and just a fraction of the total damage being wrought by overdevelopment, intensive farming and climate change.

The annual economic value of the 63 million hectares of wetland worldwide is said to total $3.4bn. In the pharmaceutical trade, up to 50 per cent of all of the $640bn market comes from genetic resources. Anti-cancer agents from marine organisms alone are valued at up to $1bn a year.

Last week, a study by the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Natural History Museum in London and the International Union for Conservation of Nature suggested more than a fifth of the world's plant species are threatened with extinction. The coalition hopes that linking the disappearance of biodiversity to a threat to economic stability will act as a "wake-up call".

Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, believes the UK has a crucial role in bringing countries together to agree on action. In an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday, Mrs. Spelman warned: "We are losing species hand over fist. I would be negligent if I didn't shout from the rooftops that we have a problem; that the loss of species will cost us money and it will undermine our resilience in the face of scientific and medical research. We are losing information that we cannot re-create that we may need to save lives and to save the planet as we know it."

The Government, working with Brazil, will use the 193-nation summit in Nagoya on 18 October to push for an agreement on sharing the benefits of biodiversity. They hope to thrash out an early draft of a deal which would ensure that regions rich in natural resources, including South America, Asia and Africa, receive the benefits enjoyed by developed countries. In many parts of the world, the survival of the natural environment is a matter of life and death for the people who live there. Forests contribute directly to the livelihoods of 90 per cent of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty. Half of the population of the developing world depends indirectly on forests.

But for many, the environmental and economic damage is already done. The collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery in the 1990s is said to have cost $2bn and tens of thousands of jobs, while mangrove degradation in Pakistan caused tens of millions of dollars of damage to the fishing, farming and timber industries.

More than a quarter of the world's original natural biodiversity had gone by 2000, and a further 11 per cent of land biodiversity is expected to be lost by 2050. According to some estimates, the rate of extinction is up to 1,000 times that expected without human activity and, now, climate change.

"The way we are doing things is not sustainable," Mrs. Spelman added. "Biodiversity is where climate change was 20 years ago -- people are still trying to understand what it means and its significance. Things that we thought nature provides for free, actually if you lose them, cost money."

The scenario is already being played out in China, where the demise of its bees has led to workers climbing ladders to cross-pollinate plants. "We have to do everything we can to stop that happening here and elsewhere," said Mrs. Spelman, who last month addressed the environmental event at the United Nations. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, had demanded urgent action. "Too many people still fail to grasp the implications of this," he said. "We have all heard of the web of life. The way we live threatens to trap us in a web of death."

The breakthrough in the battle to persuade countries worldwide to sign up to the biodiversity agenda is the development of Teeb, part-funded by the British, German and Norwegian governments, which calculates the value of nature and the cost of its loss. Developed by Mr. Sukhdev, an Indian banker turned environmental economist, its data will be broken down by countries and regions. "'We must all work towards making the meeting in Nagoya a decisive moment in history," Mr. Sukhdev said.

Mrs. Spelman was critical of the last government for its approach to the problem. She told the IoS: "Mistakes have been made, well-intended, about saying we are going to stop the loss of biodiversity within a decade. Scientists will tell you that's not possible."

From greenbacks to green issues: The banker who wants to save the Earth

Who better to put a value on global biodiversity than an international banker with environmental credentials? Pavan Sukhdev, who spent much of his career working in international finance, was first approached by the EU Commission and Germany in March 2008 when he was with Deutsche Bank in India, and asked to measure the economic cost of the global loss of biodiversity.

Latests findings of the study were presented at the United Nations last month. It was widely praised in environmental circles for its ability to model the impact of a loss of biodiversity on global rates of poverty and economic inequality.

Mr. Sukhdev is leading a team of scientists in the project backed by the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, along with the German, Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish governments. Prominent figures include Defra's chief scientific advisor, Prof Bob Watson, who is a leading expert on biodiversity.

Mr. Sukhdev was involved in environmental projects in his native India, including sitting on the board of the Bombay Environmental Action Group and working alongside the Indian States Trust to develop "green accounts" for businesses that also consider the environmental impact of economic development.

In 2008, he took a sabbatical from Deutsche Bank to become a special adviser to the United Nations Environment Programme, overseeing three programmes measuring the combined economic cost of global ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss.

In his spare time he manages a model rainforest restoration and ecotourism project in Queensland, Australia, and farming in southern India.

There's no doubt that progressives took a trouncing in the midterm election, and there is ample reason to fear the influx of anti-science GOPers and Tea Party candidates coming into office. In the days following the election, President Obama said he was abandoning a climate bill for the next few years, and disappointed environmentalists by further extending a hand to the natural gas and nuclear industries.

This news comes at the same time the Union of Concerned Scientists released new information warning about the threat of an unprecedented number of wildfires that are the likely result of a warming planet, and the risk of a massive die-off of coral reefs -- our undersea forests -- that are crucial to the ocean ecosystem.

With pressing climate change threats colliding with political stonewalling, what do we do? AlterNet recently sat down with Michael Brune, who took the helm of the Sierra Club earlier this year, after serving as the executive director of Rainforest Action Network for seven years. A new edition of Brune's book, Coming Clean: Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal has just been released. Brune gave us his take on what we can do next, how we can continue to prepare for a clean energy future, and how his organization of over a million members, is planning to harness its potential.

Don Hazen: Obviously this election was disappointing on many levels, including environmental issues. On top of that we have this phenomenon of almost the whole Republican party becoming climate deniers. The big question is what happens now -- to the environmental movement, the Sierra Club, the whole issue of climate change?

Michael Brune: I would say, as bad as the election results were, it's not as though we have to give up on climate change or bow down to those conservatives in Congress. Democrats do still hold the White House, one branch of Congress, we do have a lot of champions in Congress, the courts, the State Houses, the White House -- a lot of people who do have power and intellectually agree with the need for greater urgency on this challenge.

There is a lot we can do to stay on the offense and make dramatic progress in the next few years. Even with a realistic, sober analysis of our situation, I can still see ample reason for optimism, which isn't to diminish the challenges we face and it's not to deny the fact that the challenges are steeper now than they were a few weeks ago and they are more daunting then at the beginning of 2010 or last summer.

However, I not only think can we accomplish a lot, I'm confident that we will.

DH: What are some examples of what we can accomplish?

MB: The fight against coal is one of the areas where we should be the most optimistic. The work that the Sierra Club has been doing over the last few years on climate has been to stop the construction of new coal-fired power plants. There were 150 new plants that were proposed early in the Bush years -- the Sierra Club and a big movement of grassroots groups have defeated 138 of them! There are a couple dozen more that have been added since then so there are more on the books but we have a plan in place where we think we can defeat 90 percent.

So that's historic -- that's a major change -- it gives us the opportunity to create a major change in how power is produced in the country. Now we are in a situation where the U.S. has an old and outdated fleet of coal-fired power plant -- 78 percent of U.S. coal plants are 30 years or older, 60 percent are 40 years or older. We've got dozens and dozens which were build in the '20s, '30s and '40s that don't have pollution controls, they don't have scrubbers, they don't have effective ways to deal with soot and smog and coal ash -- they consume large amounts of water and create large amounts of water pollution. And the kicker is that they are now being held to higher standards, where as though they have been grandfathered in under the Clear Air Act in 1970 and they were grandfathered in when the Clean Air Act was reauthorized, the administration is going through a series of rule-makings that will force these plants to either be upgraded or retired which creates a big opportunity.

So the Sierra Club, which has been focusing on stopping new plants from being built, will now shift resources to these old plants and our goal is to retire half of the existing coal plants in the country and replace them with clean energy over the next decade. If you think about the impacts of that, politically we'll have a coal industry that is half the size and we'll have solar and wind and efficiency companies that are growing larger and have more power and are more profitable.

DH: There is a scenario, which is not a crazy scenario given that there are 21 Democratic Senate seats open in 2012, that we will have a conservative president and significant control of both Houses. Are your plans still feasible with that kind of opposition?

MB: Even right now we are starting to see big threats coming from folks in Congress in both Houses challenging the EPA's authority to regulate under the Clean Air Act. Over the next few weeks to months to years, we will see a variety of attacks on the EPA -- we'll see lawsuits filed to slow down the EPA and affect the implementation of different rules; we'll see legislative efforts to try to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases; we've already seen bills that will delay the EPA's authority to regulate parts of the Clean Air Act; we'll probably see a national version of Prop 23; we'll see efforts to restrict the funding of the EPA probably; and we'll see personal attacks on Lisa Jackson and deputy administrators. There's going to be a whole lot of heat coming toward the EPA -- we've already seen it and it's only going to intensify.

That's with the current Congress -- so of course if there's a conservative president in a few years one can envision the scenario will intensify and if we had a new EPA head we wouldn't see that much progress. Elections are important, they do matter.

But there is still a lot we can accomplish between now and then. The rule on mercury is going to be finalized and the rule on coal ash is going to be finalized, as important examples. You have coal plants that are already not economical, that are already operating at the margins, whereas wind is getting cheaper, more efficient, more technologically advanced. There is no doubt that we will make continued progress to reduce our dependence on coal, where there is doubt is how far we'll go and how quickly that will happen.

First we have to stop the problem from getting worse -- we can't continue to build new coal plants, then we have to shut the existing ones down, replace them with clean energy and take care of the workers.

Tara Lohan: Given the subsidies for coal and oil right now, how can we get renewables to be competitive?

MB: The subsidies are a foot on the neck for solar and wind companies. Attacking subsidies is one area where we have a sliver of hope that we can work with some conservative members of Congress and address the deficit and level the playing field for a wide variety of energy solutions. We don't know what the posture of the new Congress is going to be but that clearly will be one area where there is bipartisan support for cutting subsidies that really don't contribute to the public good.

TL: Your Beyond Coal Campaign has been really successful. How do we replicate that for other initiatives?

MB: It's bottoms up and a little bit top down, so one of the things that's unique about the Sierra Club is that we have a chapter in every state and a local volunteer group in just about every major city in the country. And the coal fight is very local -- there are plants in communities that are poisoning the people that live around them. A lot of our strategies come from the grassroots and then it is also supported by the national office in terms of our legal team, which has filed hundreds of lawsuits against new and old coal plants.

The growth area where we haven't done our job yet on the coal campaign is that we have to get better as an organization and a movement advocating for the solutions that we want to see. We have to be as sophisticated, as powerful, as creative in helping to fill the market share for clean energy. That is increasingly becoming important -- it's one thing to stop a new plant from being built but when you're arguing for a new plant to be shut down you have to make a plausible case for how you can keep the lights on.

So, the Sierra Club and the entire environmental movement needs to put more resources toward this -- change our budgets and add more staff and volunteers toward the task. To address that at the Club we've just combined our coal and clean energy campaigns so that they are one now, so each campaigner has a mandate for how many megawatts of old dirty power they have to help ensure is retired on a yearly basis, and how many megawatts of clean energy they need to help to get established.

TL: Where are you seeing the most growth in terms of getting renewable energy?

MB: The two areas of real growth are desert Southwest solar facilities, and we are seeing a lot of progress, but not a lot of megawatts yet, for offshore wind on the eastern shore. We are really interested in scaling up offshore wind in the Great Lakes, sited appropriately. What we need to clearly put more attention towards and create grassroots campaigns to support is more distributed generation.

For us, we're really interested in the upper Midwest where states like Wisconsin or Michigan have a lot of old dirty coal plants. The region gets a majority of their power from coal -- 60 percent or more. They have a large manufacturing base, a lot of skilled workers who are out of work, when you are talking about off-shore wind, it has got to be locally sourced, it's not economical to be shipping it from China, so there is a great opportunity to shut down coal plants in the same region and open manufacturing facilities and then site wind farms nearby. There is a set of holistic regional solutions there that can make big progress. We are going to create a new political dynamic when we do that where the clean energy concept isn't just a theoretical concept -- real people, real families will have jobs, and their lives will be impacted by the solutions we're promoting.

TL: One of the great things that I saw come out of the defeat of Prop 23 in California is that people got the connection between the economy and the environment -- that environmental regulations can create jobs and are stimulating, not hurting the state's economy, but it seems we haven't seen that elsewhere in the country as much.

MB: I left San Francisco on Election Day to go to DC, and the reason for that is that the story we have in California is pretty important in the sense that we have the third highest unemployment in the country. Voters in California took a stand for clean energy not in spite of the economic downturn but because of the economic downtown. They are seeing investments in clean energy as a core strategy to engineer an economic recovery.

DH: How does the Sierra Club fit in with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy and those other big groups? Are you all relatively compatible? Are there leadership gatherings and cooperation?

MB: There is an entity called the Green Group, which I think was once the group of eight or 10 but now there are 35 environmental organizations ranging from Audubon, TNC, NRDC, Sierra Club, Green for All, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and others -- we meet three times a year. We moved our last meeting down to New Orleans to talk about oil and how we can work together and be more aggressive to reduce our dependence on oil.

It's a collegial, collaborative atmosphere, but we are going to have to evolve and become much more effective as a collection of organizations if we are going to meet the challenges we currently face.

DH: Is there growth in the environmental movement? Are young people apolitical?

MB: There is the potential for growth, I don't see many groups that are exploding in size, but there is not a shortage of activism, really. If you look at the coal work we are doing, it's a huge movement of organizations and individuals -- it's really easy to get into because there are specific places and specific policies. There are coal plants on 60 college campuses across the country and we've just hired an organizer for every one. You've got coal plants that are inside major cities. We don't see a shortage there -- but when it comes to broader national policy issues, it is probably more challenging than it was five or 10 years ago. I think a big reason for that is because there is just a declining confidence among too many activists that when they engage they can make a difference. They believe it more for local issues than for big national changes.

DH: You have the advantage of being able to go hyper-local with your infrastructure or global, while most groups can't.

MB: Yes, and I think one of the challenges we have is to remind people and inspire people and show people when we are making a big difference. We talk about 138 coal plants that have been defeated as a way of thinking about when people do organize and put their energy together for a specific purpose we can do great work. And we can apply that strategic focus toward bigger challenges ahead. Over the next few years as we create a track record of shutting down old facilities, capturing how that is happening and popularizing what actually worked is as important as shutting down the facilities itself because it is necessary to build momentum.

TL: Considering a climate bill has now been pronounced dead in Congress and with the president, how do we approach this issue, which many see as political suicide?

MB: I think that right now we are in a little bit of a trough where people are intimidated or feeling timid in talking about climate change and so they don't want to -- I don't really buy that -- I don't think it is as much of a politically radioactive term as some people will say. I think we should continue to talk about climate change and the Sierra Club will. At the same time it's natural that different people will be inspired by different things. Many people will be inspired to take action because they are concerned about public health, other people are really inspired by clean energy, other people are motivated by national security or economic competitiveness. What I think is most strategic for groups like the Sierra Club is to address all of those values, so we are more interested in telling people how our solutions will help people solve their every day problems instead of engaging in these debates about what's the right words to choose or the right frame.

TL: What about the international community that is waiting for actual legislative change in this country?

MB: I'm not saying that we shouldn't work on climate change, but the international community will have to adjust its expectation. It doesn't look like we are going to produce comprehensive climate legislation in the next couple of years. We need it. But we aren't going to get it. What we will get is bigger reductions in carbon over the next five-10 years than we would have gotten under any of the climate bills that were introduced in the last Congress. By cutting carbon coming from coal and cutting our oil consumption, we'll produce more carbon reductions between now and 2020 than was in any recent bill. I think it's important to note that one single bill coming through Congress wasn't the only way to address climate change in the U.S.

TL: In terms of cutting oil you're talking about fuel efficiency and electric cars. What else?

MB: Yeah, so that's most of it -- 71 percent of oil is used for transportation now and a lot of that is in cars, trucks, SUVs and heavy duty trucks. So it's a combination of electrifying transportation, using hybrids, mode shifting -- shifting freight away from heavy duty trucks to rail or boats -- and electrifying the rail system. Maybe for certain applications moving to compressed natural gas or liquified natural gas and then looking at what role biofuels might play in acting as a replacement for oil for airlines and other long distance uses.

TL: Where are you guys on the natural gas scenario and the idea that gas is a 'bridge fuel' from dirty to clean energy?

MB: We don't think it's a bridge fuel really, because it doesn't get us to a clean energy future. We have to get off coal as quickly as possible. It's the dirtiest fuel and natural gas is cleaner than coal and in some cases cleaner than oil, but it's not clean. As we retire a coal plant we want a mix of efficiency and solar and wind and in some cases geothermal where appropriate and natural gas to fill in the mix. But it's got to be produced right. I spent some time in the Marcellus Shale and in Dimock, Pennsylvania -- it's just awful what is happening there. We have created a natural gas campaign at the Club since I started to address a lot of the concerns that fracking poses to water quality and air quality. To sum it up, we think that natural gas is an improvement in our energy mix, but there is a huge, fat asterisk next to gas that needs to be addressed.

DH: I've been putting together a list of all the reasons why Democrats lost. Is it that right-wing conservatives want to win more?

MB: We don't seem to have the same passion, we have not yet given evidence that we have the same enthusiasm and the depth in our organizing and so we need to reconnect to our base -- we have to lead with our values and not the policy solutions. There is way too much talk about cap and trade or cap and dividend and a lot less talk of the reasons why we are fighting for the things we are fighting for. There is a lot too much talk about the right frame or parts per million and a lot less talk about how we can cut pollution and make people's lives better and improve health and jobs.

But it can be turned around. We are not set in stone. Obama can plant his flag on any number of important issues, like ending mountaintop removal mining.

DH: Is there anything we haven't asked you that you'd like AlterNet readers to know?

MB: Here's what we think is important to do now: We are re-prioritizing, reconnecting to our base and working to build a coalition of progressive organizations to develop a really clear and complete vision for how a clean energy transition will make big improvements in people's lives. I know there is a lot of skepticism and pessimism about what our challenges are as a movement but I think that now is not the time to be timid or depressed; now is really our time to be clear and strategic and bold in the solutions we are advocating for.

Burning coal and oil for more than 100 years has resulted in human-made climate change. We cannot allow another 100 years of the same.

I’ll tell you about five Godzilla-scale fossil-digging projects in North America that if approved will set us on a course to repeat our past with grave implications for the future of our planet. You may have already heard about some of these projects individually, but the urgency to stop them collectively is more than ever before.

I’m not talking about fossil-digging projects that tell us something about our ecological past or our cultural past. I’m talking about digging for coal and oil. I remember reading somewhere that “the largest profits are made by making and selling products that go up in the air.” Throughout the twentieth century digging for coal and oil, and then burning it to send carbon into the air was enough to ensure astronomical profits for a handful of fossil-fuel corporations.

But I also remember the saying, “What goes up must come down.” For a hundred years, burning all that coal and oil gave us -- the humans -- great comforts, but the carbon we sent up in the air also resulted in the tremendous pain of climate change -- the rapid melting of sea ice and icebergs that is destroying Arctic marine ecology, the ocean acidification and coral deaths that are causing havoc to marine life in the tropical and temperate seas, droughts and beetle infestations that have killed hundreds of millions of trees around the world, intense forest fires and floods -- remember Russia and Pakistan this summer? The list goes on and on ... you know the story. Our planet is also experiencing the greatest rate of biodiversity loss ever and climate change will continue to worsen the ongoing tragedy of species extinction.

Recently, ecophilosopher and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva began her acceptance speech at the Sydney Opera House for the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize with these words: “When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits -- limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.”

In terms of calendar years, we stepped into the twenty-first century about ten years ago, but in all other ways we have continued to live the life of the twentieth century, with our ongoing love affair with coal and oil. If you think we are entering the twenty-first century with a wonderful clean energy future that will be healthy for all life on earth, think again! If there is one thing the U.S. midterm election has guaranteed, it is this: Oil and coal lobbies and their climate denier supporters in Congress are ready to force us farther into the new century with another one hundred years of fossil-digging in North America. Right now they’re probably eating gourmet steak flown in from Argentina to gather strength and drinking fine Italian wine to gather passion to unleash an unprecedented fossil-digging campaign after the 112th Congress is sworn in come January.

The process has already begun. Last week Shell Oil launched a massive ad campaign to pressure the Obama administration into allowing them to begin drilling in the Beaufort Sea of Arctic Alaska during 2011. The New York Times reported, “The company (Shell) is placing ads for the rest of the month in national newspapers, liberal and conservative political magazines and media focused on Congress.” In late May, as the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was unfolding in front of our eyes (a long-forgotten event for our amnesiac culture), I wrote a story titled “BPing the Arctic?” that pointed to the dangers if President Obama allows Shell to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of the Arctic Ocean. I also wrote about Shell’s “Let’s Go” ad campaign in September. If you read these pieces and understand what’s now unfolding, you’ll know Shell isn’t kidding around: They’re spending a lot of money that will go far toward their plan to drill in the icy Arctic Ocean. President Obama ought not to cave under the pressure of Shell’s ad campaign and must not issue the permit for 2011 Beaufort Sea drilling, and also Chukchi Sea drilling if they later ask for it.

How Much Fossil Fuel Are We Talking About?

It’s worth taking a quick look at some of the numbers from five massive fossil-digging projects that the fossil-fuel lobby will be pushing hard during the 112th Congress.

Oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas

By current estimates, there are some 30 billion barrels of oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Arctic Alaska. Let’s put that number in perspective. In the U. S. each year we consume a little over 7.5 billion barrels of oil, so those 30 billion barrels only amounts to 4 years of U. S. consumption. Not that long, right? But that’s not how it works. We don’t eat dinner with just a big hunk of steak only -- we may eat a salad before, plus a bit of steamed veggies, maybe even a baked potato, add a glass or two of wine or margarita, then maybe some desert, and even a cup of decaf coffee. Add all that up, and a 15-minute act is extended to an hour and a half. It’s the same way with America’s energy consumption, with oil coming from elsewhere and also coal, gas, and tar sands contributing to the energy needs. Shell could potentially keep drilling in the Arctic Ocean for the next twenty or thirty years. In the process, they’ll create massive dead zones in a cold, slow-growing habitat that will take centuries to heal, unlike the warm Gulf of Mexico, where things grow relatively fast. We must fight to stop Shell from drilling in America’s Arctic Seas.

Oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

For the past ten years, much of my work has focused on the ecological and human rights issues in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the most biologically diverse conservation area in the Arctic. I have worked closely with human rights organization Gwich’in Steering Committee in Fairbanks, Alaska and with activist environmental organization Alaska Wilderness League in Washington, D.C.

BP’s oil-and-methane spill in the Gulf of Mexico prompted Alaska Native peoples of the Gwich’in Nation to gather in late July in Fort Yukon, Alaska at the confluence of the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers. They created a magnificent human aerial-art PROTECT with images of caribou antler and salmon, two species the Gwich’in communities critically depend on for subsistence food, and both these species are threatened by climate change and potential oil-and-gas development. I’d urge you to visit the Gwich’in Steering Committee website to learn about the human-rights implications of drilling in the Arctic Refuge and the important work they have been doing since 1988 for the protection of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain from oil-and-gas drilling.

So how much oil is there in the Arctic Refuge? Best estimates go from about 7 billion to 16 billion barrels, meaning 1 to 2.5 years of U. S. annual oil consumption. Again, with some help from other energy sources, oil companies could potentially keep drilling in the Arctic Refuge for ten years or more. In the process, they’ll turn one of the most important ecocultural regions in the entire Arctic into an industrial wasteland and then leave.

As it happens, the 50th anniversary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is on December 6. Photographer Jeff Jones and writer Laurie Hoyle has just published a magnificent photo-essay book Arctic Sanctuary: Images of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that you can check out. And conservation organizations have a proposal in front of President Obama to once-and-for-all designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a National Monument, which the President ought to do before the start of the 112th Congress.

Coal in the Utukok River Upland, Arctic Alaska

I doubt you’ve heard of the Utukok River Upland in northwest Arctic Alaska, or the projection that it contains the largest coal deposit in North America -- an estimated 3.5 trillion tons of bituminous coal, which is nearly 10% of world’s known coal reserves. Let’s put that number in perspective. The annual coal consumption in the U.S. is about 1 billion ton, which means at the current rate of consumption we could potentially burn the Arctic coal for the next 3,500 years. No, that’s not a typo -- 3,500 years! Burning coal for the past couple of centuries has brought our planet earth down to her knees with toxicity and now climate change. Can you even imagine what it would mean for life-on-earth if we burn all that coal for the next 3,500 years?

Much of that Arctic coal sits atop the core calving area of the Western Arctic caribou herd, the largest caribou herd in Alaska, estimated at some 377,000 animals that nearly 40 indigenous communities from three tribes -- Inupiat, Yupik, and Athabascan -- rely on for subsistence food, as well as cultural and spiritual identities. That coal is also on or near the surface of the land, meaning the development will be mountaintop removal, not unlike the devastation that has been taking place in the Appalachian coal belts of the American Southeast.

I first went to the Utukok River Upland in June 2006 with writer Peter Matthiessen and other colleagues. We witnessed caribous with newborn calves, wolves that seemed to have never seen a human before, grizzlies that ran away at catching our scent, birds that were nesting on the tundra and on the cliffs of riverbanks, and so much more. We came away with a great appreciation for the ecological fecundity of this magnificent and remote region. If you’re curious, you can read Peter’s essay on the experience, which appeared in The New York Review of Books, and my essay, which appeared in the anthology Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture, Politics.

While no coal development permit has yet been given in the Utukok River Uplands inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), but in 2006 the Canadian mining company BHP Billiton began exploration just outside, in the land owned by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, where the Western Arctic caribou herd with their newborn calves gather in massive numbers, up to 250,000 animals during their post-calving aggregation. We must make sure no permit for coal is ever given in the NPRA federal lands.

Tar Sands and Shale Oil in Alberta, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Plains

In a powerful recent piece in Yale Environment 360, Keith Schneider points out some disturbing numbers: “The tar sands region of northern Alberta, Canada contains recoverable oil reserves conservatively estimated at 175 billion barrels, and with new technology could reach 400 billion barrels”; and “Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming hold oil shale reserves estimated to contain 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil.” Schneider continues, “If current projections turn out to be accurate, there would be enough oil and gas to power the United States for at least another century.”

There is one serious catch. Tar sands and shale oil are the dirtiest forms of energy and are the most environmentally destructive in its recovery and production. They produce far more greenhouse gas than conventional oil and gas, meaning more accelerated climate change, and require huge amounts of water for their production. It takes 2.5 to 6.5 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of tar sands oil. You can do the math -- this is certainly not sustainable. At a time when the American West is already suffering from massive droughts and high temperatures due to climate change, these unconventional fossil-digging projects will undoubtedly spark great wars over oil-or-water.

Coal in Appalachia

In late September, leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and more than 100 activists from Appalachia Rising were arrested in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., for protesting mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachia. Jeff Biggers reported, “Appalachian residents are calling on the EPA to halt any new permit on the upcoming decision over the massive Spruce mountaintop removal mine.” The Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County, West Virginia, would be a gigantic mountaintop removal mine that would bring great devastation to the region by destroying thousands of acres of forests, burying 7 miles of streams, and ending the way of life of many Appalachian families.

So how much coal is in the Appalachia? The Energy Information Administration has estimated that there are about 53 billion tons of coal reserves in the Appalachian Basin. Potentially we could be digging for that coal for the rest of this century. But that coal will come to us with great devastation. If you’d like to know more about the great social and environmental costs of mountaintop coal mining, you can check out this article, “Coal Controversy in Appalachia,” published in NASA’s Earth Observatory website.

On October 15, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson recommended the withdrawal of the Spruce No.1 mining permit. With climate deniers firmly placed in the 112th Congress, we can surmise safely that this fight is far from over.

To understand why Hansen is willing to risk his government job and his scientific credibility by getting arrested time and again, you simply have to take a look at the title of his article in late August in the Guardian: “Am I an activist for caring about my grandchildren’s future? I guess I am.”

We Must End Coal and Oil to Start Clean Energy

As I think about our inability so far to end our fossil-fuel based economy and start a clean-energy future, I think about the following words by T. S. Eliot from his poem, Little Gidding, which is part of his masterpiece Four Quartet:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

The beginning of coal and oil has been the beginning of the end of sustainable living on earth; to make an end for coal and oil would ensure a beginning for clean energy. But unless we make such an end, there’ll be no beginning for clean energy to take us back to sustainable living on earth.

Next year the First Family will be taking showers with water warmed by the mighty sun falling on the solar panels that will be installed on the roof of the White House. But such small symbolic action and other clean-energy initiatives will be meaningless if the five fossil fuel projects I mentioned take off happily during the 112th Congress.

We’ve burned coal and oil for more than hundred years that has resulted in the human-made climate change we’re dealing with right now. We cannot allow one more hundred years of the same. So we must stand up and STOP any maniacal plan that would set us on a path to ‘another one hundred years of fossil-digging in North America.’

Fighting these mega-scale projects may seem overwhelming for any individual, but here are a few things you can do this month:

Art -- Find out about 350 EARTH (November 20-28), the largest human aerial-art installation ever to fight climate change, and see how you can get involved.

Letter -- Write a letter for the ‘Million Letter March: The Write Way to Stop Climate Change’ campaign.

Petition -- Sign the Alaska Wilderness League ‘Keeping it Wild’ petition and urge President Obama to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a National Monument.

LTE -- Write ‘Letter to the Editor’ opposing Shell’s 2011 drilling plan in the Beaufort Sea.

Posters -- Work with artists and writers in your community and create posters on all of the five projects I mentioned and distribute them throughout your town to educate your community members. Being informed about these fossil-digging projects is the first step toward engagement that may lead to action.

For our part, we’ll regularly present stories on this series at ClimateStoryTellers.org.

I've often daydreamed about what an alien civilization would think about Earth if it were ever to come visit, given our fractured ethnic, political, and economic planet, the epidemic violence, our ecological ignorance and mismanagement, the miserable way so many people live in poverty and misery, and our global failure to eradicate basic diseases such as cholera that simply require safe water and sanitation systems available to everyone reading this column.

Indeed, as Calvin says to Hobbes in Bill Watterson's classic cartoon, "Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

One of these global failures was the failure to acknowledge a formal human right to water. There is a formal international human right to life, to human health, to an adequate standard of living, to adequate food, and more. But until a few weeks ago, there was no formal human right to water.

There is now. On September 24th, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted a binding resolution that

"Affirms that the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right to life and human dignity"

This declaration was a long time coming. The planet's bedrock political and civil human rights laws were put in place over 60 years ago. The United States played a leading role in formulating and supporting those laws, in line with our democratic principles, our commitment to rights, and our national character. And while there are occasional controversies over definitions, and occasional government policies that ignored or flouted these principles and rights, the US continues to be a leading voice for these rights.

Conversely, the United States has not played a leading role in, and indeed has often been in opposition to, extending human rights law into the area of social, economic, and cultural rights, even though major international covenants covering these rights were passed by the UN in the 1960s. And the US has never supported a human right to water. Until now.

More than a decade ago, I wrote a journal article on the human right to water that stated:

"Access to a basic water requirement is a fundamental human right implicitly and explicitly supported by international law, declarations, and State practice... access to water can be inferred as a derivative right necessary to meet the explicit rights to health and an adequate standard of life."

And in subsequent years, discussions and negotiations expanded at the UN, in national governments, in international water meetings, and in academia about the justification for such a right and the responsibilities and duties that would accompany it. The negotiations over this right dragged on and on, with the US and a few other countries consistently opposed to extending human rights law to water. The long discussions finally ended with a General Assembly resolution in July, followed by the UN's Human Rights Council formal resolution in late September, and on September 30th, the US government (somewhat grumpily, I think) affirmed its agreement with these resolutions. In their statement explaining their vote in favor, the US said:

"The United States is proud to take the significant step of joining consensus on this important resolution regarding the right to safe drinking water and sanitation, which is to be progressively realized. The United States remains deeply committed to finding solutions to the world's water challenges. Safe drinking water and sanitation are essential to the rights of all people to an adequate standard of living, and to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health."

This is a first step, not a last step. Will finally acknowledging a human right to water and sanitation solve the world's water and sanitation problems? No.

Water Number: 4 Good Reasons for the Human Right to Water.

But here are four reasons why it is a good idea:

1. Acknowledging such a right will encourage the international community and individual governments to renew their efforts to meet basic human needs for water for their populations.

2. By acknowledging such a right, pressures to translate that right into specific national and international legal obligations and responsibilities are much more likely to occur.

3. This clear declaration will help maintain a spotlight of attention on the deplorable state of water management in many parts of the world.

4. Finally, explicitly acknowledging a human right to water can help set specific priorities for water policy, which is often fragmented, uncoordinated, and focused on providing more water for some people, rather than some water for all people.

And there's a fifth reason: it's just the right thing to do.

What is needed now is to develop appropriate tools and mechanisms to achieve progressively the full realization of these rights, including appropriate legislation, comprehensive plans and strategies for the water sector, and financial approaches. As the UN has noted, the right to water also requires full transparency of the planning and implementation process in the provision of safe drinking water and sanitation and the active, free and meaningful participation of the concerned local communities and relevant stakeholders, including vulnerable and marginalized groups. And it is time to acknowledge that even here in the richest country of the world, there are people without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, and to work harder to meet those needs as soon as possible.

In the end, I do not think that finally meeting basic needs for water and sanitation will occur just because there is finally a clear acceptance of a legal human right to water and rules for what governments must do to progressively realize those rights. But it is certain to help accelerate the day when safe water and sanitation are available for all. Whether anyone out there is watching or not.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gleick/detail?entry_id=75517#ixzz1448rFQqS

Diplomacy Journal is dedicated to peace education, environmental protection, human rights and disarmament under the auspices of the International Association of Educators for World Peace (IAEWP). Dr. Charles Mercieca is President of IAEWP and has been a consistent writer for our Global Community monthly Newsletter. His articles cover similar topics found in Diplomacy Journal. Indeed, in Dr. Mercieca articles every word has a direct root from somewhere and so must be used correctly. His work with us was uploaded at http://globalcommunitywebnet.com/PeaceNow/Mercieca.htm

Contents section include global issues and events of concern to all those who care for Peoples.

In every era of history, we always had a group of countries which were drawn together by mutual common interests and benefits. Dr. Mercieca Diplomacy Journal allows writers from a great many countries all over the world to publish their work within the Journal. Articles are mostly based on historical facts and truly reflect understanding of the topic.

Perhaps one could define Dr. Mercieca's life work and character as that of a great diplomat dedicated to peace and harmony.

Thank you Dr. Mercieca.

Germain Dufour
Spiritual Leader of the Global Community

Note
Diplomacy Journal Home Page
http://www.djournal.co.kr

The first time I was exposed to Climate Change deliberations and negotiations was as a media fellow of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ) at COP 14(Conference of the Parties) in Poznan, Poland, in 2008. To me, a journalist committed to sensitize my readers about the crisis of Climate Change and how it is in our hands to stem the tide, these negotiations flummoxed me. I could not understand how countries could sit together for hours and days ‘deliberating’ on the steps they planned to take in 2025 and 2050 when the steps that were imperative were now, This moment, immediate!

Then came chaotic COP 15 in Copenhagen and my heart sang as I left India for Copenhagen because I knew that Barack Obama, the new president of the richest economy in the world was coming to COP 15 and he would make things work. Till Copenhagen, the US refused to even acknowledge the crisis of Climate Change. Obama’s famous tag line that filled the hearts and minds of the world was “We can make a change!” so he would definitely go beyond the rhetoric I thought, at least for the sake of our environment and the world.

Instead COP15 was a screaming dissenting mass of humanity from all parts of the globe. There were apparently 45,000 accredited participants but only 12,000 could get in per day and on some days we stood outside in the freezing cold of Copenhagen in December, trying to get a chance to get in from 7am in the morning. Inside was no better with screaming NGO’s and countries walking out of negotiations on a whim. Countries like the Solomon Islands and Bangladesh revealed shockingly frightening stats where they could wake up to no country, being swallowed up by rising seas. The youth of those countries sat up on podiums, with heart rending witness accounts, trying to crack the hard exteriors of negotiators to wake up to the crisis. It was an appalling situation and my sympathies were totally with Yvo de Boer (the man is an impeccable gentleman) and the rest of the UNFCCC who were desperately trying to bash some semblance of an agreement out. Finally the world’s headlines screamed that COP15 had been a ‘failure’ but personally, I think Climate Change became headline making news rather than being relegated to the inner pages of the paper because of COP15.The common man who was unaware of the situation, sat up and began to take notice. To me – that was success.

COP 16 is around the corner and is planned to be held in Cancun, Mexico. Will there or won’t there be an agreement is anyone’s guess. Christiana Figueres has been appointed the new Executive Secretary and hopefully she is able to bring some sense into the proceedings. Again everything is in flux – no one can predict the outcome and most feel it’s going to be another Copenhagen. Just a huge waste of time, effort and money.

However now before the December meeting there is some interesting news put out by the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) which makes heart- warming news if it can be slammed into place. Vulnerable nations could hasten international action on climate change by taking industrialised countries to court, say lawyers. Climate-vulnerable developing nations could use international law to break the current deadlock in the intergovernmental negotiations on climate change by taking industrialised nations to court, says a paper published on 4th Octoberby the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD).

The publication comes out as government officials from around the world gather in Tianjin, China for three days of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“A large part of the relevant legal literature suggests that the main polluting nations can be held responsible under international law for the harmful effects of their greenhouse-gas emissions,” says the paper’s author, lawyer Christoph Schwarte.

“As a result affected countries may have a substantive right to demand the cessation of a certain amount of emissions. In selected cases they also have the procedural means to pursue an inter-state litigation in an international judicial forum such as the International Court of Justice in The Hague.”

Reading Schwarte’s paper one can see his case for a possible legal argument to float this lawsuit and he explains the potential impacts of bringing a case like this before an international court or tribunal. While there are various substantive and procedural legal hurdles, under certain circumstances litigation under public international law would be possible and could become a bargaining platform in the negotiations.

“Today, a credible case for inter-state litigation on climate change can be made,” says Schwarte. “Developing country governments are understandably reluctant to challenge any of the big donor nations in an international court or tribunal. But this may change once the impacts of climate change become even more visible and an adequate agreement remains wanting.”

FIELD analyzed the current legal discourse and has summarized its findings in a longer working paper, which it has made available online as an open wiki document to allow legal academics and practitioners to comment on, criticise or strengthen the arguments.

“While international judicial organs are unlikely to issue hard hitting judgments, climate change litigation may help to create the political pressure and third-party guidance required to re-invigorate the international negotiations, within or outside the UNFCCC,” says Schwarte.

He too states that at the current rate of progress, a new legal framework and ambitious emission reductions look unlikely in the near-term. As a result billions of extra tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere, and many scientists warn that this means global temperatures could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Joy Hyvarinen, Director of FIELD says ‘Progress in the international climate change negotiations is nowhere near enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level. Something new is needed to push the negotiations forward. Perhaps an international court case could help bring new momentum to the negotiations.’ But it will have to be a fast track court case, or it will turn into another pointless exercise in this seemingly inconclusive debate on Climate Change.

( The writer is a media fellow with UNFCCC, UNEP and the Robert Bosch Stiftung and teaches PG Journalism in St. Joseph’s College & COMMITS, Bangalore)

It is an age of crises. Capitalism in its crisis-ridden history has never faced a similar situation like now when so many crises have “come down” on this earth, have joined together, acting together and also, acting against each other, aggravating all, and are threatening not only humanity, with which capitalism’s relation is antagonistic but which is essential for the survival of capitalism, but also the world system capitalism has constructed over centuries. Now it is not the proletariat, the grave diggers of capitalism, but the edifice, the world system capital has devised in its process of accumulation and globalization that is threatening the world capitalist system. The relationship, opposites uniting together and opposing each other, built up by capitalism is the show of its crisis generating efficiency. But, alas, none of the market mongers are there to celebrate this efficiency!

Crisis creating capacity of capitalism is being reaffirmed by the present state of the world. The world system is riddled with crises: The Great Financial Crisis, the Great Hunger, the environmental crisis, the energy crisis including the peak oil reality. The crisis in democracy is not limited in the periphery only. Advanced capitalist states are also showing signs of crisis in their body-politic. The issues of equity and equality, in the realms of distribution, access, entitlement, rights and resources, remain a far cry in the entire world system and thus constitute one of the biggest crises. The crises, on the one hand, are hindering the progress of humanity, and on the other, have appeared as a threat to world peace, to the peace in the lives of billions, to humanity’s quest for prosperity and happiness, to their efforts for a stable life. Thirst for accumulation, adventures for profit, hunger for expansion, and wars – propaganda, trade, diplomatic, and military – for empire have brought these crises that have been and are being designed and directed by a few. The triumph of capital in its globalization expedition has aggravated the situation. The adventure began since capital enthroned itself on the barbarous dream of appropriating all the resources and labor from all the continents and oceans, space and the depth of the earth, centuries ago, since capital crowned itself as the master of the entire world, of all the human beings, and of all life and dead, of history, philosophy, and science. The seed of crises it thus sowed in all spheres of life – nature and society, economy and politics, ideology and education, institutions and relations. It had no capacity to resolve the contradictions, antagonistic and irreconcilable, between the few indulging in unimaginable luxury and humanity striving for survival, created with its greed and cruelties, with its power for accumulation and appropriation, extortion and exploitation, with its energy to destroy and deface. The consequences of aggrandizement now are engulfing the entire earth with all the crises humanity is experiencing.

Has ever the earth experienced so many crises, so many crises simultaneously? Has any of the societies, slave owning or feudal, occidental or oriental, created any parallel to these crises? Had any of the empires, from the east to the west, the power to create any of the crises of this magnitude, global? Have all the civilizations of the past days ravaged resources of the earth to this level and thus created crises that now threaten the entire humanity? Were the crises created in the pre-present world system periods entwined together like the present, one influencing the others, and thus accelerating the speed and velocity towards the earth’s journey to its destruction? Can a single such crisis be identified there in the domains of savages and warlords, in the paths of conquests by conquerors and marauders? Were there crises in all the past phases of the world that joined together, that increased the magnitude of the rest? Not a single instance is there in the annals of human history, and thus the all powerful capital stands unparallel. But, it has gone to its limit, bankrupting itself of all creativity, but the power of destruction that now even threatens itself, and it still plans to reap profit by capitalizing the crises, the climate change, the environment crisis, the food and energy crises, etc., despite the looming demon of destruction over its fate. It has ignited fires of conflict and strife, and is increasing tension in geopolitics. But, it is failing to escape the fundamental contradictions, the contradictions that are embedded in its accumulation adventure.

[This is the 1st part of the introduction of The Age of Crisis by Farooque Chowdhury being serialized in Countercurrents.]

Also Read

The Age of Crises- Part I

Capital in Crisis Environment in Crisis [Part II]

Globalization of Crises [Part III]

The Age of Crises: North And South After “Globalization” [Part IV]

The Age of Crises: South: After The Great Financial Crisis [Part V]

The Age of Crises: Hunger Poverty Inequality [Part VI]

The Age of Crises: Banks And Financialization [Part VII]

The Age of Crises: Withering Unipoler Geopolitics- Part VIII

Respected oil analyst Charles Maxwell has told Forbes – and with it the North American business establishment – to brace itself for peak oil by “2017 or 2018.”

Maxwell is rapidly becoming the new Matthew Simmons, an establishment peak oil whistleblower. Simmons, present when the term peak oil was coined, went on to obtain a degree of mainstream respect for the concept, based on the pioneering work of M King Hubbert. In the Forbes interview, Maxwell suggests “around 2015, we will hit a near-plateau of production around the world,” with peak oil experienced within two to three years of this.

Much of the reaction to this isn’t over what was said – Maxwell has voiced similar peak oil warnings previously – so much as where it was said. Forbes is not noted as a friend of the peak oil hypothesis, which states geological restrictions mean there will be a time of maximum oil output and that, despite investment and innovation, production will subsequently diminish. Unconventional oil supplies such as Canadian oilsands will not be able to prevent this, despite the hype. Canada’s Prime Minister may claim “Alberta's tar sands are second only to Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil reserve,” but these are “energy- and capital- and time-intensive” and have lousy flow rates – output cannot be scaled up to meet the ravenous global demand for oil.

An item in Oil Price, with the clear headline Respected Oil Analyst Forecasts Peak Oil by 2017, notes with surprise that:

Respected oil analyst and oil industry veteran Charles Maxwell (nicknamed the ‘Dean of Oil Analysts’) has forecast peak oil by 2017or 2018:

His prediction is not so remarkable, as is where he made his prediction. The prediction was in Forbes, which has often scoffed at the notion of a near-term peak.

But a number of disparate commentators, working independently, are predicting a tightening in oil supplies perhaps as early as 2011. Reports published this year by a UK business consortium, the US military, insurers Lloyds, Kuwait University engineers, the German military and an Australian think tank collectively point to a coming supply crunch between 2012 and 2015. Together, they refer to a list of issues including oil industry underinvestment, declining new discoveries and aging oilfields - at a time of surging global demand.

According to the International Energy Agency’s Sept. 10 Oil Market Report, global demand is predicted to reach 86.6 million barrels per day in 2010, and then 87.9 million barrels per day in 2011 – passing the all-time high of 86.9 million barrels per day established in 2008 before the global economic downturn. Soaring demand is being pushed by China, the world’s fastest growing major economy and its largest energy consumer, and India, the world’s second-fastest growing economy.

The IEA’s chief economist Fatih Birol who, as I’ve mentioned previously, has been repeating the phrase the era of cheap oil is over at any chance he gets, was recently quoted talking about non-Opec oil “reaching a peak” and saying that “strong real demand growth and lack of investment in production [suggests that] in 2013, 2014 we may well see higher prices than we have seen in the recent past.”

And UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne earlier this month spoke of a possible doubling in the price of oil, and a subsequent oil shock.

It’s hard to escape the impact of the repetition of the same few projected dates for the onset of peak oil by independent commentators. Which adds credence to the comments of Charles Maxwell, Weeden & Co.’s senior energy analyst - he's clearly not going out on a limb, after all. The Forbes interview, Bracing For Peak Oil Production by Decade's End, quotes him saying:

A bind is clearly coming. We think that the peak in production will actually occur in the period 2015 to 2020. And if I had to pick a particular year, I might use 2017 or 2018. That would suggest that around 2015, we will hit a near-plateau of production around the world, and we will hold it for maybe four or five years. On the other side of that plateau, production will begin slowly moving down. By 2020, we should be headed in a downward direction for oil output in the world each year instead of an upward direction, as we are today.

And at around 2015, we will be unable to produce the incremental barrel in the global system. So a tightness of supply will begin to be felt. Let's say in 2013, we may produce 1% more oil than we did the year before and then if we have a demand growth of 1¼% in 2013, we'll be very slightly tightening the system.

The difference between supply and demand is not going to be very much at first. It would not normally cause a big rise in price. On the other hand, in 2014, that tightness begins to grow and it is now a trend. By 2015 perhaps we're only able to produce 0.50% more with about 1.25% higher demand, so that we're 0.75% short. And now we have to raise prices enough to stop some people from using that oil because it is actually not available.

He suggests that oil “supply and demand are now in rough equilibrium and that means that prices are in a range between about $69 on the bottom and about $86 on the top,” but supply will most likely begin to turn tight “around 2013 or 2014.” It will naturally be followed by a price spike – and, he suggests subsequent windfall profit taxes on oil companies – and a global scramble to find alternatives to oil.

That begins to scare people, since they can look ahead and see that the issue is not going to be resolved quickly, since you have to find the oil many years in advance of being able to produce it. We just haven't found enough oil for a number of years, so this problem is now beyond the reach of some big, major discovery that suddenly would provide us with a sufficiency. And so far, we have no technological breakthrough to assist us.

So we're going to have to make a switch from using oil to using more coal or more natural gas or more nuclear or other alternatives. But most alternative supplies (such as hydropower) can't be expanded quickly. Solar power is too small to be meaningful. Wind power, again, is too small, and most of the good places for wind have already been taken.

Courtesy: Energy Bulletin

Millennium Development Rights would transform the global struggle against poverty and provide accountability for governments, corporations, and others who deny those rights

President Obama’s speech at the UN’s summit on development acknowledged the “progress that has been made toward achieving certain Millennium Development Goals,” but cautioned that “we must also face the fact that progress towards other goals that were set has not come nearly fast enough. Not for the hundreds of thousands of women who lose their lives every year simply giving birth. Not for the millions of children who die from the agony of malnutrition. Not for the nearly one billion people who endure the misery of chronic hunger.”

The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, were part of the UN’s ambitious yet profoundly insufficient fifteen-year anti-poverty plan of 2000. The MDGs set out the goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal mortality, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and creating a global partnership for development—all by 2015.

But except for some anecdotal improvements in a few countries, the MDGs as a global effort to end extreme poverty by 2015 have so far failed. President Obama was, however understated, absolutely right when he said that the goals have not been met “nearly fast enough.” UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon sounded a note of desperation, telling the summit that it was essential that “promises made become promises kept,” because the “consequences of doing otherwise are profound: death, illness and despair, needless suffering, lost opportunities for millions upon millions of people.”

Those consequences of failure are indeed endemic throughout the Global South—impacting the most vulnerable in every impoverished country, most especially women and children. But ultimately, among the governments and officials and agencies who crafted and embraced the MDGs, there is no one to blame, no one is held accountable. And that's not surprising. When you define something as a goal to be reached, or an aspiration to be achieved, or a hope or an ambition or a target, there is no real blame when the goal is not met. Oh sorry, we missed the goal. We'll try harder. We'll do things differently. It's no one's fault.

The high-profile MDG summit didn’t change the failure. According to Joanna Kerr, head of the advocacy group ActionAid, it was “an avalanche of warm sentiment that cleverly concealed the fact that no fully funded plans of action for tackling poverty were actually announced.” It was, she said, “an expensive side-show that offered everything to everyone and nothing to no one.”

Ban ki-Moon said “we must hold each other accountable,” and promised that the UN system would do its best to hold all sides accountable. But the very definition of the MDGs—these are development GOALS, after all—limits that accountability. The MDGs should have been identified from the beginning as 'MDRs'—Millennium Development RIGHTS. When rights are violated, someone, or some government, or some corporation, can be held accountable. Someone can go to court, or demand redress in some other way. That's why the U.S. has refused to ratify things like the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—if that Covenant were the law of this land, things like jobs and health care and a decent standard of living would be RIGHTS in this country, not just goals and aspirations.

President Obama announced a new U.S. global development policy, and claimed that the U.S. is “changing the way we do business.” He said “aid alone is not development.” And he’s right. And he said “our focus on assistance has saved lives in the short term, but it hasn’t always improved those societies over the long term…. We have to offer nations and peoples a path out of poverty.” He’s right about that too. But then he goes on to identify “the most powerful force the world has ever known for eradicating poverty and creating opportunity”—and it wasn’t debt relief, the one sure method that works to improve people’s lives. No, President Obama’s goal is free markets and untrammeled economic growth. And that’s not likely to bring the MDGs any closer to success.

In 2015, President Obama might still be president. He, or his successor, will very likely face a world in which extreme poverty still destroys lives in the billions—a world in which extreme poverty and hunger still rule the day, where children continue to die too early and too many women die in childbirth, a world in which HIV/AIDS still ravages too many populations and in which environmental sustainability, universal education and gender equality remain out of reach.

The only way to change that reality is through building a new internationalist movement, involving civil society AND governments AND the United Nations. And a movement based on rights—with accountability when those rights are violated.

The MDGs have failed. We don’t need new strategies for the MDGs, we need MDRs. We need Millennium Development RIGHTS to change the world.

Phyllis Bennis wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Phyllis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. She is co-author of Ending the U.S. War in Afghanistan: A Primer.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Nobody likes to hear a bleak diagnosis. But without a proper diagnosis, if you have a serious illness, your chances of survival become vanishingly small.

Enter Guy McPherson, conservation biologist, climate scientist and blogger, who despite his gloomy outlook about the prospects for industrial civilization--he thinks it could disappear within his lifetime--regards himself as an optimist. Why? Because back in 2002 after he finished editing a book on global climate change, he concluded that "we had set events in motion that would cause our own extinction, probably by 2030."

But, then he discovered the concept of peak oil and realized that "its consequences might bring the industrial economy to an overdue close, just in time." That development would make it possible for humans to persist on the planet for a considerably longer time by saving the life support systems of the Earth essential to both humans and the other species which humans rely on. Peak oil became a cause for optimism rather than pessimism.

I asked McPherson, who gave a talk this weekend near where I live, what would change his mind about the trajectory of industrial civilization. He answered that the discovery of a miraculous, cheap, easily scalable new energy source would probably allow our current arrangements to persist for a while longer. But such a development would be a death sentence for the human race since it would lead to the total destruction of the life support systems we rely on, systems which are only seriously crippled now. It would result in further population overshoot, resource depletion including that of soil and water, and further destruction of species we rely on for our well-being.

He likened what we are doing now to constructing an extra floor on the top of a 30-story brick structure using bricks pulled from the lower floors. We are engaging in the "world's largest game of Jenga" with the building blocks of our existence.

He says the emerging collapse of our modern living arrangements is not a recent phenomenon, but actually an ongoing process. He traces it back to the oil crises of the 1970s which were the beginning of the end. The key metric in his view is a peak in per capita oil consumption in 1979. McPherson says he would not be surprised if the endgame for industrial civilization plays out very quickly given the long period of stress both human society and the biosphere have been under for the last generation.

As a response he suggests focusing on four things: water, food, maintaining proper body temperature, and community. Water and food are obvious needs, but many of us don't think about whether the climate we live in will allow us to maintain proper body temperature. We have central heating and air conditioning to help us with that. But when such amenities are not available, the climate where we live will become crucial to our well-being and comfort.

By community he means building ties of mutual support with one's neighbors. "There ain't no lone rangers in collapse," McPherson explained. "If you look for ways to serve your community, you've got a good life ahead." His model is Monticello (minus the slaves) where "agriculture was the center of commerce and therefore the center of life."

As part of his own preparations he lives on land at moderate elevation with deep soils and easily accessible water. He grows food and raises goats for milk. The area is already populated by what he calls "life-loving economic doomers" who do not need to be convinced that industrial civilization is coming to an end. Mutual assistance is a way of life. Practical concerns trump philosophical and religious differences.

To do all this McPherson left his position as a tenured professor. He says at the beginning he knew practically nothing about how to provide the necessities for himself. "I could barely distinguish between a zucchini and a screwdriver," he explained. Now, he's milking goats, making cheese, growing vegetables and performing myriad our tasks necessary to a more localized existence, one that does not rely so heavily on the far-flung logistical networks of the globalized economy.

He doesn't call what he's doing "sustainable," a term which, he said, has even been co-opted by Wal-Mart. Instead, he refers to it as "durable," meaning he is trying to build a way of life that will outlive industrial civilization. He said his cosseted existence as an academic did little to prepare him for what he is doing now. But precisely because of this he is convinced that "if I can do this, anyone can do this."

And, in the manner of a principled prophet on a lonely mission, he soldiers on each day trying to help others build a durable way of life before it's too late.

Courtesy: Energy Bulletin

Only 500 generations ago, hunter-gatherers began cultivating crops and forming their tiny communities into social hierarchies. Around 15 to 20 generations ago, industrial capitalism erupted on a global scale.

In the last generation, the entire human species, along with virtually all other species and indeed the entire planet, have been thrown into a series of crises, which many believe threaten to converge in global catastrophe: global warming spiraling out of control; oil prices fluctuating wildly; food riots breaking out in the South; banks collapsing worldwide; the spectre of terror bombings in major cities; and the promise of ‘endless war’ to fight ‘violent extremists’ at home and abroad.

We are running out of time. Without urgent mitigating, preventive and transformative action, these global crises are likely to converge and mutually accelerate over the coming decades. By 2018, converging food, water and energy shortages could magnify the probability of conflict between major powers, civil wars, and cross-border conflicts. After 2020, this could result in political and economic catastrophes that would undermine state control and national infrastructures, potentially leading to social collapse.

Anthropogenic global warming alone illustrates the gravity of our predicament. Global average temperatures have already risen by 0.7C in the last 130 years. In 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told the world that at current rates of increase of fossil fuel emissions, we were heading toward a rise in global average temperatures of around 6C by the end of this century, leading to mass extinctions on a virtually uninhabitable planet. The Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences has reported that current fossil fuel emissions are exceeding this worst-case scenario.

Many scientists concede that without drastic emissions reductions by 2020, we are on the path toward a 4C rise as early as mid-century, with catastrophic consequences, including the loss of the world’s coral reefs; the disappearance of major mountain glaciers; the total loss of the Arctic summer sea-ice, most of the Greenland ice-sheet and the break-up of West Antarctica; acidification and overheating of the oceans; the collapse of the Amazon rainforest; and the loss of Arctic permafrost; to name just a few. Each of these ecosystem collapses could trigger an out-of-control runaway warming process. Worse, scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley now project that we are actually on course to reach global temperatures of up to 8C within 90 years.

But our over-dependence on fossil fuels is also counterproductive even on its own terms. Increasing evidence demonstrates that peak oil is at hand. This is when world oil production reaches its maximum level at the point when half the world’s reserves of cheap oil have been depleted, after which it becomes geophysically increasingly difficult to extract it. This means that passed the half-way point, world production can never reach its maximum level again, and thus continuously declines until reserves are depleted. Until 2004, world oil production had risen continuously but thereafter underwent a plateau all the way through to 2008. Then from July to August 2008, world oil production fell by almost one million barrels per day. It’s still decreasing, even according to BP’s Statistical Review 2010 (which every year pretends that peak oil won’t happen for another 40 years) – in 2009 world oil production was 2.6 percent below that in 2008, and is now below 2004 levels.

Oil price volatility due to peak oil was a major factor that induced the 2008 economic recession. The collapse of the mortgage house of cards was triggered by the post-peak oil price shocks, which escalated costs of living and led to a cascade of debt-defaults. A study by US economist James Hamilton confirmed there would have been no recession without the oil price shocks. While the recession slumped demand, allowing oil prices to reduce, experts now warn of a coming oil supply crunch by around 2014. As climate change intensifies natural disasters – such as droughts in food-basket regions, floods in South Asia and the heatwave in Russia – and as the full impact of peak oil eventually hits, costs to national economies will rocket, while world food production declines.

Already, global warming has exacerbated droughts and led to declines in agricultural productivity over the last decade, including a 10-20 per cent drop in rice yields. The percentage of land stricken by drought doubled from 15 to 30 per cent between 1975 and 2000. If trends continue, by 2025, 1.8 billion people would be living in regions of water-scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress. By 2050, scientists project that world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40 per cent.

Maps released by scientists at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE), University of Wisconsin-Madison, show that the earth is “rapidly running out of fertile land” for further agricultural development. No wonder, then, that world agricultural land productivity between 1990 and 2007 was 1.2 per cent per year, nearly half compared to 1950-90 levels of 2.1 per cent. Similarly, world grain consumption exceeded production for seven of eight years prior to 2008.

Apart from climate change, the ecological cost of industrial methods is fast eroding the soil – in the US, for instance, 30 times faster than the natural rate. Former prairie lands have lost one half of their top soil over about a 100 years of farming – but it takes 500 years to replace just one-inch. Erosion is now reducing productivity by up to 65 per cent a year. The dependence of industrial agriculture on hydrocarbon energy sources – with ten calories of fossil fuel energy needed to produce just one calorie of food – means that the impact of peak oil after 2014 will hugely constrain future world agricultural production.

But oil is not the only problem. Numerous studies show that hydrocarbon resources will become increasingly depleted by mid-century, and by the end of this century will be so scarce as to be useless – although we do have enough to potentially tip us over into irreversible runaway global warming.

Former TOTAL geologist Jean Laharrere projects that world natural gas production will peak by around 2025. New technologies mean that unconventional forms of natural gas in the US might prolong this some decades, but only if future demand doesn’t increase. The independent Energy Watch Group (EGW) in Berlin projects that world coal production will also peak in 2025, but the journal Science finds that this could occur “close to the year 2011.” EGW also argues that world production of uranium for nuclear energy will peak in 2035. According to the Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group at Uppsala University, unconventional oil – such as oil shale and tar sands –will be incapable of averting peak oil. Greater attention has turned to thorium, which certainly holds greater promise than uranium, but as pointed out by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Washington DC, thorium still requires uranium to “kick-start” a nuclear chain reaction, and as yet no viable commercial reactors have been built despite decades of research.

The exponential expansion of modern industrial civilization over the last couple of centuries, and the liberal ideology of ‘unlimited growth’ that has accompanied it, has been tied indelibly to 1) the seemingly unlimited supply of energy provided by nature’s fossil fuel reserves and 2) humankind’s willingness to over-exploit our environment with no recognition of boundaries or constraints. But the 21st century is the age of irreversible hydrocarbon energy depletion – the implication being that industrial civilization, in its current form, cannot last beyond this century.

This means that this century signals not only the end of the carbon age, but the beginning of a new post-carbon era. Therefore, this century should be understood as an age of civilizational transition – the preceding crises are interlocking symptoms of a global political economy, ideology and value-system which is no longer sustainable, which is crumbling under its own weight, and which over the next few decades will be recognized as obsolete. The question that remains, of course, is what will take its place?

While we may not be able to stop various catastrophes and collapse-processes from occurring, we still retain an unprecedented opportunity to envisage an alternative vision for a new, sustainable and equitable form of post-carbon civilization.The imperative now is for communities, activists, scholars and policymakers to initiate dialogue on the contours of this vision, and pathways to it.

Any vision for ‘another world’, if it is to overcome the deep-rooted structural failures of our current business-as-usual model, will need to explore how we can develop new social, political and economic structures which encourage the following:

1. Widespread distribution of ownership of productive resources so that all members of society have a stake in agricultural, industrial and commercial productive enterprises, rather than a tiny minority monopolising resources for their own interests.

2. More decentralised politico-economic participation through self-managerial producer and consumer councils to facilitate participatory decision-making in economic enterprises.

3. Re-defining the meaning of economic growth to focus less on materially-focused GDP, and more on the capacity to deliver values such as health, education, well-being, longevity, political and cultural freedom.

4. Fostering a new, distributed renewable energy infrastructure based on successful models such as that of the borough of Woking in Surrey, UK.

5. Structural reform of the monetary, banking and financial system including abolition of interest, in particular the cessation of money-creation through government borrowing on compound interest.

6. Elimination of unrestricted lending system based on faulty quantitative risk-assessment models, with mechanisms to facilitate greater regulation of lending practices by bank depositors themselves.

7. Development of parallel grassroots participatory political structures that are both transnational and community-oriented, by which to facilitate community governance as well as greater popular involvement in mainstream political institutions.

8. Development of parallel grassroots participatory economic institutions that are both transnational and community-oriented, to facilitate emergence of alternative equitable media of exchange and loans between North and South.

9. Emergence of a ‘post-materialist’ scientific paradigm and worldview which recognizes that the cutting-edge insights of physics and biology undermine traditional, mechanistic conceptions of the natural order, pointing to a more holistic understanding of life and nature.

10. Emergence of a ‘post-materialist’ ethic recognizing that progressive values and ideals such as justice, compassion, and generosity are more conducive to the survival of the human species, and thus more in harmony with the natural order, than the conventional ‘materialistic’ behaviours associated with neoliberal consumerism.

Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London. His latest book is A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization (Pluto, 2010).

The warming trend on the planet has reached deep into world oceans over the last two decades, particularly in the waters around Antarctica, according to a new study. While earlier studies have shown that the upper levels of the planet’s oceans are getting warmer, scientists with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say their latest research shows that waters at a depth of 3,300 feet and more have absorbed about 16 percent of the heat accumulating in the upper layers of the ocean.

While the temperature increase is relatively slight — about 0.02 degrees C per decade in the Southern Ocean, and less elsewhere — researchers say it’s still a significant increase given the massive volume of water involved and the high capacity of water to absorb heat. That temperature increase has not only caused ocean water to expand worldwide, increasing sea levels, but has contributed to the melting of some Antarctic ice sheets, according to the paper, published in the Journal of Climate. Sea levels around Antarctica have increased by 3 millimeters annually — about an eighth of an inch — since 1993.

Il y a quelques années, une commission a été mise en place par l’ancien Secrétaire général de l’ONU, Kofi ANNAN . Depuis, elle a rendu ses conclusions, certains ajustements ont été faits, des nouvelles instances en son sein ont été mises en place, cependant, la vénérable Institution est-elle réellement l’instrument de la gouvernance mondiale ? Je ne le pense pas !

Déjà, lors de la mise en place de l’OMC après le Gatt, j’ai émis l’idée, que cet organisme soit une branche sous le contrôle des Nations Unies ? Ceci, car l’équilibre alimentaire, celui des services au stade de la mondialisation peuvent créer des avancées sociales comme des conflits. Ceci, alors que le sommet du millénaire, a fait de la lutte contre la pauvreté, l’une de ses priorités, et que l’UNESCO, a déclaré la pauvreté comme une atteinte fondamentale aux droits de l’homme, comme peuvent l’être : la torture ou les mines anti personnelles..

Durant toute une période, le rapport des forces entre l’ex URSS et les USA, a nui à l’évolution et au crédit de la structure ; et le fait : que le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU soit composée de 5 membres permanents lesquels, disposent tous de l’arme nucléaire et se figent, dés que leurs intérêts sont mis en cause. Bref, ceci gêne l’évolution de l’Institution. Ainsi, les Etats –Unis, ont toujours bloqué toute tentative de condamner Tel Aviv, qui ne respectait pas les résolutions du conseil de sécurité. Egalement, la tragédie tchétchène a pu perdurer, ceci car Moscou interdisait à l’Institution de s’en mêler.

Pékin est chatouilleuse, dés que la question de sa chasse gardée est menacée, la France et la Grande Bretagne, ont pratiqué de même lors de la guerre d’Algérie et d’Irlande, etc..

Alors certes ,l’entrée du Brésil soutenu par la France, comme celle de l’Afrique du Sud serait une bonne chose. Cependant, dans ce monde polarisé, j’irai plus loin encore. Depuis le tournant libéral des années 80, de fait, ce sont les structures comme la banque mondiale, le fonds monétaire international, et les structures politiques des plus forts économiquement et financièrement qui dirigent le monde comme le G8 élargi au G20 .

Pour ma part, je pense que le Conseil permanent de sécurité de l’ONU devrait être élargi au Japon = le seul pays à avoir connu la tragédie atomique, mais également a une représentation par continent non représenté actuellement en son sein.

Compte tenu, que bien des documents comme la charte de l’ONU, la déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme (que j’ai proposé d’amender par une nouvelle déclaration des droits et devoirs humains des citoyens et des Etats,) d’autres documents, demeurent des références planétaires, et que la déclaration initiale de l’ONU débute par ces mot s »Nous les peuples… » Il deviendra urgent, que l’Assemblée générale de l’ONU, donne davantage de place aux représentants de la société civile avec voix délibérative, et non seulement consultative.

De fait, l’appel de l’ONU est devenu la référence des ONG et mouvement sociaux qui luttent, espèrent …Pour que l’eau, l’énergie, les aliments, le logement, l’éducation, les droits fondamentaux de la femme, la santé….ne soient pas des marchandises au gré des profits et des influences, par la force ou les pressions du pouvoir, il y faut une gouvernance mondiale, certes, respectant les Nations et les Unions, mais fixant des règles d’harmonie et de paix, des règles écologiques, pour l’avenir et l’équilibre de la planète terre.

Pour le prochain mandat du poste de Secrétaire général, je propose, qu'une femme devienne la titulaire (expérience qui contribuerait à la prise en considération du respect des droits fondamentaux de la femme dont celle de l'accès à toutes les responsabilités comme les hommes.)

Il s'agirait, de désigner une personne connue pour ses compétences, son autorité, son charisme personnel, et sa notoriété publique. Les femmes donnent la vie, l'acharnement à la paix, pourrait caractériser la titulaire de la fonction.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE
Auteur et chanteur pour la paix, les droits et devoirs humains
Messager de la culture de la paix
Lauréat européen et mondial des Académies de la culture et des arts.

ALGUNAS REFLEXIONES BREVES de un CIUDADANO COMÚN PARA LA REFORMA DEMOCRÁTICA DE LA ONU

Hace algunos años, se estableció a una comisión por el antiguo Secretario General de la ONU, Kofi ANNAN. ¿Desde, sus conclusiones, se hicieron algunos ajustes, se estableció a nuevas instancias en el mismo, sin embargo, la digna Institución es el instrumento realmente de la gobernanza mundial? ¡No lo pienso!

Ya, en la instauración de la OMC después del GATT, emití la idea, que este organismo sea una rama bajo el control de las Naciones Unidas? Y ello, ya que el equilibrio alimentario, el de los servicios en la fase de universalización pueden crear proyecciones sociales como conflictos. Y ello, mientras que la cumbre del milenio, hizo la lucha contra la pobreza, una de sus prioridades, y que la UNESCO, declaró la pobreza como un ataque fundamental a los derechos humanos, como puede serlo: la tortura o las minas anti personal.

Durante un período entero, el informe de las fuerzas entre la antigua URSS y los EE.UU, perjudicó a la evolución y al crédito de la estructura; y el hecho: que el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU esté compuesto de 5 miembros permanentes los cuales, disponen muy del arma nuclear y se solidifican, en cuanto se cuestionen sus intereses. Resumidamente, esto obstruye la evolución de la Institución. Así pues, los Estados Unidos, siempre han bloqueado toda tentativa de condenar Tel Aviv, que no respetaba las Resoluciones del Consejo de Seguridad. También, la tragedia chechena pudo durar, esto ya que Moscú prohibía a la Institución mezclarse.

Pekín es chatouilleuse, en cuanto la cuestión de su coto vedado se amenace, Francia y Gran Bretaña, practicó así mismo en la guerra de Argelia e Irlanda, etc.

Entonces ciertamente, la entrada del Brasil sostenido por Francia, como la de Sudáfrica sería una buena cosa. Sin embargo, en este mundo polarizado, iré más lejos aún. Desde el cambio de dirección liberal de los años 80, de hecho, son las estructuras como el Banco Mundial, el Fondo Monetario Internacional, y las estructuras políticos del las más fuertes económica y financieramente que dirigen el mundo como el G8 ampliado al G20.

Por mi parte, pienso que el Consejo permanente de seguridad de la ONU debería ser ampliado a Japón = el único país a haber conocido la tragedia atómica, pero una representación también tiene por continente no representado actualmente en el mismo.

Teniendo en cuenta, que muchos documentos como la carta de la ONU, la declaración universal de los derechos humanos (que propuse enmendar por una nueva declaración derechos y deberes humanos de los ciudadanos y Estados,) de otros documentos, permanecen referencias planetarias, y que la declaración inicial de la ONU comienza por esta palabra s” el pueblo…” él se nos volverá urgente, que la Asamblea General de la ONU, da aún más lugar a los representantes de la sociedad civil con voz y voto, y no solamente consultiva.

De hecho, la llamada de la ONU se convirtió en la referencia de las ONG y movimiento sociales que lucha, espera… para que el agua, la energía, los alimentos, el alojamiento, la educación, los derechos fundamentales de la mujer, la salud….no son mercancías a la voluntad de los beneficios e influencias, por la fuerza o las presiones del poder, hay una gobernanza mundial, ciertamente, respetando las Naciones y a las Uniones, pero estableciendo normas de armonía y paz, de las normas ecológicas, para el futuro y el equilibrio del planeta tierra.

Para el próximo mandato del puesto de Secretario General, propongo, que una mujer se convierta en el titular (de experiencia que contribuiría a la toma en consideración del respeto de los derechos fundamentales de la mujer cuya la del acceso a todas las responsabilidades como los hombres. Se trataría, de designar a una persona conocida para sus competencias, su autoridad, su carisma personal, y su notoriedad pública. Las mujeres dan la vida, la impaciencia a la paz, podría caracterizar el titular de la función.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE
Autor y cantante por la paz, los derechos y deberes humanos
Mensajero de la cultura de la paz
Laureado europeo y mundial de las Academias de la cultura y las artes.

SOME REFLECTIONS BREVES Of an Ordinary citizen FOR DEMOCRATIC UNO REFORMS

A few years ago, a commission was installation by the former General secretary of UNO, Kofi Annan. Since, it its conclusions, certain adjustments were made, of the new authorities in its center were installation, however, worthy is Institution returned really the instrument of the world governorship? I do not think it!

Already, at the time of the installation of OMC after GATT, I put forward the idea, that this organization is a branch under the control of the United Nations? This, because food balance, that of the services at the stage of universalization can create social progresses like conflicts. This, whereas the top of the millenium, made fight against poverty, one of its priorities, and that UNESCO, declared poverty like a fundamental infringement of the human rights, as can the being: personal torture or anti mines.

During a whole period, the report/ratio of the forces between the ex the USSR and the USA, harmed the evolution and the credit of the structure; and the fact: that the Safety advice of UNO is made up of 5 permanent members which, all have the nuclear weapon and solidify, as soon as their interests are blamed. In short, this obstructs the evolution of the Institution. Thus, the United States, always blocked any attempt to condemn Tel Aviv, which did not respect the resolutions of the safety advice. Also, the tragedy tchetchene could perdurer, this because Moscow prohibited at the Institution to be interfered.

Beijing is chatouilleuse, as soon as the question of its exclusive domain are threatened, France and the United Kingdom, practiced in the same way at the time of the war of Algeria and Ireland, etc.

Then certainly, the entry of Brazil supported by France, as that of South Africa would be a good thing. However, in this polarized world, I will go still further. Since the liberal turning of the Eighties, in fact, they are the structures like the World Bank, the funds international currency, and the political structures of strongest economically and financially which direct the world like G8 widened in G20.

For my part, I think that the permanent Council of safety of UNO should be widened in Japan = the only country to have known the atomic tragedy, but also has a representation by continent not currently represented in his center.

Taking into account, that many documents like the charter of UNO, the universal declaration of the human rights (which I proposed to amend by a new declaration of the rights and human duties of the citizens and States,) of other documents, remain planetary references, and that the initial declaration of UNO begin with these word S” Us them people…” It will become urgent, which the General meeting of UNO, more gives place to the representatives of the civil society with deliberative voice, and not only advisory.

In fact, the call of UNO became the reference of social ONG and movement which fight, hope… So that water, energy, the food, housing, education, the basic rights of the woman, health….are not goods with the liking of the profits and influences, by the force or the pressures of the capacity, one needs a world governorship for it, certainly, respecting the Nations and the Unions, but fixing rules of harmony and peaces, rules ecological, for the future and the balance of the planet ground.

For the next mandate of the position of secretary general, I propose, that a woman becomes it titular (experiment which would contribute to the catch in consideration of the respect of the basic rights of the woman for of which that of the access to all the responsibilities like the men.) It would act, to nominate a person known for her competences, its authority, its personal charisma, and its public notoriety. The women give the life, eagerness with peace, could characterize it titular of the function.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE
Author and singer for peace, the rights and duties human
Messenger of the culture of peace
European and world prize winner of the Academies of the culture and arts.

Le gouvernement américain, a annoncé mardi 12 octobre, avoir procédé le mois dernier, à un essai nucléaire dans le désert du Nevada. Cet essai, ne déclencherait pas de réaction en chaîne pouvant conduire à une explosion nucléaire. Or, cette annonce concerne le premier essai nucléaire depuis l’arrivée à la tête de l’Etat américain de Barack OBAMA. Les Maires des villes martyres d’Hiroshima et de Nagasaki, ont protesté contre cet essai, mais je les trouve bien isolés !

Personnellement, après son discours à Prague en avril 2009, son invitation devant le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU à tous les gouvernements à rejoindre le TNP et après sa réception du prix Nobel, je trouve regrettable cet essai .Ce n’est pas ce type d’essai qui va favoriser par tous les pays disposant de l’arme nucléaire, l’interdiction totale des essais.

J’en profite pour dire, que trop de médias, ont été silencieux s’agissant de cet essai, sinon, lui ont réservé un commentaire insignifiant !

Enfin, je regrette que bien des ONG qui discourent sur la paix et les droits humains, restent prudents ou évasifs devant trop d’atteintes aux droits humains de partout de par le monde.

Pour ma part, j’ai proposé au Comité Nobel qu’à côté d’un prix Nobel de la paix remis à des Chefs d’Etat ou à des dirigeants d’ONG, il existe un prix Nobel pour les personnes ordinaires, qui souvent dans l’anonymat, se mobilisent à leur niveau, souvent plus, que des dirigeants officiels.

En son temps, j’ai protesté contre le silence vis-à-vis de l’attitude des dirigeants russe en Tchétchénie. J’ai dénoncé, les massacres, tortures, sévices, infligés aux populations musulmanes dans l’ex Yougoslavie.

Présentement, je regrette, que bien des démocrates en Amérique latine, restent silencieux, devant le sort infligé à ma compatriote Florence CASSEZ, détenue arbitrairement dans une prison mexicaine.

D’autres situations provoquent mon indignation : J’attends de voir, si la colonisation israélienne va s’interrompre en Cisjordanie, ceci, afin de donner sa chance et enfin, au processus de paix au Proche Orient. Egalement, si enfin, le Hamas va reconnaître l’Etat d’Israël.

Les propos du Président iranien à l’égard d’Israël, sont inadmissibles, et ne favorisent pas un climat serein au Proche Orient. C’est pourquoi, tant lors de ma conférence à l’Université de Tokyo le 2 août, que lors de messages, j’ai proposé, que la conférence de suivi du TNP qui doit se tenir en France en novembre, préconise et favorise un accord pour la dénucléarisation de cette région.

Autre sujet : Actuellement, le christianisme est devenu la religion la plus persécutée. Cependant, même l’Occident, ne dit rien ou peu !

Il est persécuté, en Inde dans certaines régions, au Bangladesh, en Chine, au Vietnam, en Indonésie, en Corée du Nord,…..Bref, là où cette confession est minoritaire et hélas, beaucoup en pays musulmans. En Turquie, les communautés chrétiennes qui sont les plus anciennes, nées avant l’Islam, sont menacées de disparition. En Egypte (copte) ou au Liban (Maronite) ces communautés sont isolées ou émigrent vers l’Occident.

Il est ce fait au Proche et Moyen Orient, que des communautés religieuses sont attaquées, que des dignitaires religieux sont assassinés, des Eglises sont brûlées, et il y a des interdictions professionnelles de fait ou de droit. En Irak, la guerre a fait 2000 morts chez les chrétiens et des centaines de milliers de chrétiens ont été déplacés, dans le Kurdistan turc.

Pour ma part, je me méfie des concepts de vérité absolue ou relative, présentés comme scientifiques par des théories ou théoriciens. La pensée scientifique, procède par bonds qualitatifs.

Il n’est nullement dans mon esprit, de nier l’intérêt et l’apport de travaux sur la paix et l’harmonie qui contribuent au devenir pacifique de l’humanité. Cependant, j’invite à l’humilité tout chercheur qui pense détenir la vérité; ceci, car le mouvement des connaissances est un processus jamais achevé.

Je reste : un adepte, de la fonction lucide et critique de la philosophie, (comme les philosophes Alain BADIOU, Lucien SEVE, ALAIN,...) non elle–même se qualifiant de science, mais instance de connaissance objective et subjective, qui transcende les modèles et systèmes érigés scientifiques, qui pour certains méritent l’appellation de démarche scientifique, mais qui restent soumis au regard lucide de la pensée et de l’expérimentation pratique, et jugés par le déroulement de l‘histoire.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE

TO DEFEND THE HUMAN RIGHTS EVERYWHERE AND FOR ALL!

The US government, announced Tuesday, October 12, to have proceeded last month, with a nuclear test in the desert of Nevada. This test, would not start chain reaction being able to lead to a nuclear explosion. However, this advertisement relates to the first nuclear test since the arrival with the American report heading of Barack OBAMA. The Mayors of the martyrdoms cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, protested against this test, but I find them isolated well!

Personally, after his speech in Prague in April 2009, his invitation before the Safety advice of UNO to all the governments to join the NPT and after his reception of the Nobel Prize, I find regrettable this test. It is not this type of test which will support by all the countries having the nuclear weapon, the total ban of the tests.

I benefit from it to say, that too many media, were quiet being this test, if not, reserved an unimportant comment to him!

Lastly, I consider it regrettable that many ONG which discourse on peace and the human rights, remain careful or evasive in front of too many infringements of the human rights of everywhere all over the world.

For my part, I proposed at the Nobel Committee that beside a Nobel Prize of the peace given to Heads of State or leaders of ONG, there exists a Nobel Prize for the ordinary people, who often in anonymity, mobilize themselves on their level, often more, which official leaders.

In his time, I protested against silence with respect to the Russian attitude of the leaders as Chetchnia. I denounced, the massacres, tortures, maltreatment, inflicted with the Muslim populations in the ex Yugoslavia.

At present, I regret, that many democrats in Latin America, remain quiet, in front of the fate inflicted with my Florence Cassez compatriot, held arbitrarily in a Mexican prison.

Other situations cause my indignation: I wait to see, if Israeli colonization will stop in the West Bank, this, in order to give his chance and finally, with the peace process with the Close East. Also, so finally, Hamas will recognize the State of Israel.

The remarks of the Iranian President with regard to Israel, are inadmissible, and do not support a serene climate with the Close East. This is why, as well at the time of my conference at the University of Tokyo on August 2nd, as at the time of messages, I proposed, as the conference of follow-up of the NPT which must be held in France in November, recommends and supports an agreement for the denuclearization of this area.

Another subject: Currently, Christianity became the most persecuted religion. However, even the Occident, does not say anything or little!

He is persecuted, in India in certain areas, in Bangladesh, in China, in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in North Korea, ..... Bref, where this confession is minority and alas, much in Moslem countries. In Turkey, the Christian communities which oldest, were born before Islam, are threatened of disappearance. In Egypt (copte) or in Lebanon (Maronite) these communities are isolated or emigrate towards the Occident.

It is this fact with the Close relation and Moyen the East, that religious communities are attacked, that religious dignities are assassinated, of the Churches are burned, and there are professional prohibitions in fact or right. In Iraq, the war made 2000 died among Christians and of the hundreds of thousands of Christians were moved, in Turkish Kurdistan.

For my part, I am wary of the concepts of absolute or relative truth, presented as scientists by theories or theorists. The scientific thought, proceeds by qualitative jumps.

It is by no means in my spirit, to deny the interest and the contribution of work on the peace and the harmony which contribute to becoming peaceful of humanity. However, I invite to the humility very enquiring which thinks of holding the truth; this, because the movement of knowledge is a process ever completed.

I remain: a follower, lucid and critical function of philosophy, (like the philosophers Alain BADIOU, Lucien SAP, ALAIN,…) not itself qualifying science, but authority of objective and subjective knowledge, which transcends the scientific models and set up systems, which for some deserve the scientific name of step, but which remain subjected in lucid comparison of the thought and the practical experimentation, and judged by the unfolding of L `history.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE
¡DEFENDER LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS POR TODAS PARTES Y PARA TODOS!

El Gobierno americano, anunció el martes 12 de octubre, haber procedido el mes pasado, a una prueba nuclear en el desierto de Nevada. Esta prueba, no desencadenaría reacción en cadena pudiendo conducir a una explosión nuclear. Ahora bien, este anuncio se refiere a la primer prueba nuclear desde la llegada a la cabeza del Estado americano de Barack OBAMA. ¡Los Alcaldes de las ciudades mártires de Hiroshima y Nagasaki, protestaron contra esta prueba, pero los encuentro bien aislados!

Personalmente, después de su discurso en Praga en abril de 2009, su invitación en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU a todos los Gobiernos que deben incorporarse al TNP y después de su recepción del Premio Nobel, encuentro deplorable esta prueba. No es este tipo de prueba que va a favorecer por todos los países que disponen del arma nuclear, la prohibición total de las pruebas.

¡Aprovecho para decir, que demasiados medios de comunicación, fueron silenciosos respecto esta prueba, si no, le reservaron un comentario poco importante!

Por mi parte, propuse al Comité Nobel que junto a un Premio Nobel de la paz entregado a Jefes de Estado o a dirigentes de ONG, existe un Premio Nobel para las personas ordinarias, que a menudo en el anonimato, se movilizan a su nivel, a menudo más, que dirigentes oficiales.

En su tiempo, protesté contra el silencio frente a la actitud de los dirigentes rusa en Chechenia. Denuncié, las masacres, torturas, malos tratos, infligidos a las poblaciones musulmanes en la antigua Yugoslavia.

Actualmente, lamento, que muchos demócratas en América Latina, siguen siendo silenciosos, ante la suerte infligida a mi compatriota Florence Cassez, tenida arbitrariamente en una prisión mexicana.

Otras situaciones causan mi indignación: Espero de ver, si la colonización israelí va a pararse en Cisjordania, esto, con el fin de dar su oportunidad y por fin, al proceso de paz en Oriente Próximo. También, si por fin, el Hamas va a reconocer el Estado de Israel.

Las observaciones del Presidente iraní respecto a Israel, son inadmisibles, y no favorecen un clima sereno en Oriente Próximo. Esta es la razón por la que, tanto en mi conferencia a la Universidad de Tokio el 2 de agosto, que en mensajes, propuse, quien la conferencia de seguimiento del TNP que debe celebrarse en Francia en noviembre, preconiza y favorece un acuerdo por la desnuclearización de esta región.

Otro tema: Actualmente, el cristianismo se convirtió en la religión más perseguida. ¡Sin embargo, incluso el Occidente, no dice nada o poco!

Se persigue, en India en algunas regiones, en Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, en Indonesia, en Corea del Norte, ..... Resumidamente, allí donde esta confesión es minoritaria y desgraciadamente, muchos en países musulmanes. En Turquía, amenaza a las comunidades cristianas que son las más antiguas, nacidas antes del Islam, de desaparición. En Egipto (copte) o en el Líbano (Maronita) aísla o emigrado a estas comunidades hacia el Occidente.

Se quema ha este hecho en Prójimo y Oriente Medio, que se ataca a comunidades religiosas, que se asesina a dignatarios religiosos, Iglesias, y hay prohibiciones profesionales de hecho o derecho. En Irak, la guerra hizo 2000 muertos en los cristianos y se desplazaron cientos de millares de cristianos, en el Kurdistán turco.

Por mi parte, me desconfío de los conceptos de verdad absoluta o relativa, presentado como científicos por teorías o teóricos. El pensamiento científico, procede por saltos cualitativos.

No está de ninguna manera en mi espíritu, negar el interés y la contribución de trabajos sobre la paz y la armonía que contribuye al pasar a ser pacífico de la humanidad. Sin embargo, invito de humildad muy investidagor que piensa tener la verdad; y ello, ya que el movimiento de los conocimientos es un proceso nunca acabado.

Permanezco: un adepto, de la función lúcida y crítica de filosofía, (como los filósofos Alain BADIOU, Lucien SEVE, ALAIN,…) no ella misma que se califica de ciencia, pero instancia de conocimiento objetiva y subjetiva, que supera los modelos y sistemas creados científicos, que para algunos merecen el nombre de planteamiento científico, pero que permanecen sujetos a la mirada lúcida del pensamiento y la experimentación práctica, y juzgados por el desarrollo de l `historia.

Copyright Guy CREQUIE

Pour bien des observateurs, le conflit social, lié à la réforme de notre système des retraites doit cesser. Ceci, à cause du vote au Parlement qui valide le projet gouvernemental.

En premier lieu, ce sont les salariés, et leurs organisations syndicales qui décident librement de ce qu’il en est et sera, ensuite, il faut examiner le fond de la relation entre l’expression de la démocratie politique, et celle de la démocratie sociale.

En France, et je le regrette personnellement, c’est l’échéance présidentielle, qui est censée diriger le rythme de la vie politique (et plus encore depuis l’arrivée au pouvoir de Nicolas SARKOZY, qui dirige et intervient sur tous les dossiers,) le Président donne le la de la vie politique, mais également de celles économique, sociale.du pays.

Ainsi, il apparaît aux observateurs, que l’expression à un moment donné du suffrage universel est prédominante sur l’expression de la démocratie sociale. En règle générale, sauf quelques cas d’espèces, les élections législatives qui suivent celle présidentielle, confirment le choix précédent.

Ceci, car le Président de la république élu, est censé donner l’orientation générale du programme à mettre en œuvre. Il fixe le cap, donne le sens (la direction).

Or, non seulement le programme présidentiel n’est pas respecté ; exemple la financière internationale) dont nous subissons encore les conséquences, mais également, car certaines promesses qui faisaient parties du sens ne sont pas tenues. Ou bien, il y a des changements de direction, initialement non déclarés !

Ainsi, la réforme de notre système de retraite avec la modification de l’allongement de l’âge de départ, n’était pas prévue dans le programme du candidat SARKOZY en 2007.A plusieurs reprises, il a même indiqué le contraire !

Alors, comment peut-on vouloir figer, ce qui a été dit ou non dit à une période donnée, et rendre souveraine cette position, avec les circonstances économiques, sociales, qui évoluent au rythme des jours en France et dans le monde.

La question du sens, doit être reliée à celle de la totalité des conditions d’existence de la population et des salariés, qui sont en perpétuelle évolution.

La relation entre démocratie sociale et démocratie politique, relève du même constat, que celle qui concerne la relation entre stratégie et tactique. La stratégie fixe la direction ; la tactique examine les conditions conjoncturelles pour s’y adapter.

De surcroît, l’économie nationale, ne vit plus en vase clos ! On nous explique à longueur de journée, que notre pays, doit tenir compte des orientations et décisions de l’Union Européenne, du G20, des agences de notation,….Des décisions de l’OMC, du FMI, etc.

La démocratie sociale, est plus liée au mouvement de l’évolution des phénomènes inter étatiques, économiques, sociaux, que le choix des instances politiques, qui est scandé par des moments, qui est figé à des expressions datées dans le calendrier des années.

Plutôt, que de les opposer, ou de vouloir donner la suprématie autoritaire à l’instance politique, il convient de considérer la forme de leur relation.

Bien entendu, il y a des contradictions parfois entre l’expression sociale populaire et celle du pouvoir politique qui gère.

Le rôle d’un pouvoir politique réellement au service du peuple ( car si normalement, la démocratie est le pouvoir du peuple, par le peuple, pour le peuple, )en réalité : elle est un transfert de pouvoir par les élections à des élus. Il ne s’agit pas de démocratie directe permanente, mais d’un pouvoir de délégation dans l’intervalle de la prochaine consultation électorale dans un pays comme le nôtre.

Normalement, il appartient au pouvoir de rendre les contradictions existantes entre les deux formes d’expression, en contradictions non antagoniques, avec les intérêts primordiaux du peuple.

I y aura toujours, des maux à combattre, des contradictions à affronter, des tensions à résoudre. Ceci, car être femme ou homme, est un effort sans fin !////

Copyright Guy CREQUIE
Ecrivain, et chercheur en science sociales, auteur d’ouvrages sur l’humanisme contemporain-blog http://guycrequie.blogspot.com

UXBRIDGE, Canada - The carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have melted the Arctic sea ice to its lowest volume since before the rise of human civilisation, dangerously upsetting the energy balance of the entire planet, climate scientists are reporting.

"The Arctic sea ice has reached its four lowest summer extents (area covered) in the last four years," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the U.S. city of Boulder, Colorado.

The volume - extent and thickness - of ice left in the Arctic likely reached the lowest ever level this month, Serreze told IPS.

"I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It's not going to recover," he said.

There can be no recovery because tremendous amounts of extra heat are added every summer to the region as more than 2.5 million square kilometres of the Arctic Ocean have been opened up to the heat of the 24-hour summer sun. A warmer Arctic Ocean not only takes much longer to re-freeze, it emits huge volumes of additional heat energy into the atmosphere, disrupting the weather patterns of the northern hemisphere, scientists have now confirmed.

"The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic," James Overland of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States told IPS in Oslo, Norway last June in an exclusive interview. ' Paradoxically, a warmer Arctic means "future cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception" in these regions, Overland told IPS.

There is growing evidence of widespread impacts from a warmer Arctic, agreed Serreze. "Trapping all that additional heat has to have impacts and those will grow in the future," he said.

One local impact underway is a rapid warming of the coastal regions of the Arctic, where average temperatures are now three to five degrees C warmer than they were 30 years ago. If the global average temperature increases from the present 0.8 C to two degrees C, as seems likely, the entire Arctic region will warm at least four to six degrees and possibly eight degrees due to a series of processes and feedbacks called Arctic amplification.

A similar feverish rise in our body temperatures would put us in hospital if it didn't kill us outright.

"I hate to say it but I think we are committed to a four- to six-degree warmer Arctic," Serreze said.

If the Arctic becomes six degrees warmer, then half of the world's permafrost will likely thaw, probably to a depth of a few metres, releasing most of the carbon and methane accumulated there over thousands of years, said Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks and a world expert on permafrost.

Methane is a global warming gas approximately 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2).

That would be catastrophic for human civilisation, experts agree. The permafrost region spans 13 million square kilometres of the land in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe and contains at least twice as much carbon as is currently present in the atmosphere - 1,672 gigatonnes of carbon, according a paper published in Nature in 2009. That's three times more carbon than all of the worlds' forests contain.

"Permafrost thawing has been observed consistently across the entire region since the 1980s," Romanovsky said in an interview.

A Canadian study in 2009 documented that the southernmost permafrost limit had retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years in Quebec's James Bay region. At the northern edge, for the first time in a decade, the heat from the Arctic Ocean pushed far inland this summer, Romanovsky said.

There are no good estimates of how much CO2 and methane is being released by the thawing permafrost or by the undersea permafrost that acts as a cap over unknown quantities of methane hydrates (a type of frozen methane) along the Arctic Ocean shelf, he said.

"Methane is always there anywhere you drill through the permafrost," Romanovsky noted.

Last spring , Romanovsky's colleagues reported that an estimated eight million tonnes of methane emissions are bubbling to the surface from the shallow East Siberian Arctic shelf every year in what were the first-ever measurements taken there. If just one percent of the Arctic undersea methane reaches the atmosphere, it could quadruple the amount of methane currently in the atmosphere.

Abrupt releases of large amounts of CO2 and methane are certainly possible on a scale of decades, he said. The present relatively slow thaw of the permafrost could rapidly accelerate in a few decades, releasing huge amounts of global warming gases.

Another permafrost expert, Ted Schuur of the University of Florida, has come to the same conclusion. "In a matter of decades we could lose much of the permafrost," Shuur told IPS.

Those losses are more likely to come rapidly and upfront, he says. In other words, much of the permafrost thaw would happen at the beginning of a massive 50-year meltdown because of rapid feedbacks.

Emissions of CO2 and methane from thawing permafrost are not yet factored into the global climate models and it will be several years before this can be done reasonably well, Shuur said.

"Current mitigation targets are only based on anthropogenic (human) emissions," he explained.

Present pledges by governments to reduce emissions will still result in a global average temperature increase of 3.5 to 3.9 C by 2100, according to the latest analysis. That would result in an Arctic that's 10 to 16 degrees C warmer, releasing most of the permafrost carbon and methane and unknown quantities of methane hydrates.

This why some climate scientists are calling for a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels, recommending that fossil fuel emissions peak by 2015 and decline three per cent per year. But even then there's still a 50-percent probability of exceeding two degrees C current studies show. If the emissions peak is delayed until 2025, then global temperatures will rise to three degrees C, the Arctic will be eight to 10 degrees warmer and the world will lose most its permafrost.

Meanwhile, a new generation of low-cost, thin-film solar roof and outside wall coverings being made today has the potential to eliminate burning coal and oil to generate electricity, energy experts believe - if governments have the political will to fully embrace green technologies.

A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.

“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen surpasses that of a mere consumer.”
CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL

In writing Diet for a Small Planet, I learned one simple truth: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy. But that realization was only the beginning, for then I had to ask: What does a democracy look like that enables citizens to have a real voice in securing life’s essentials? Does it exist anywhere? Is it possible or a pipe dream? With hunger on the rise here in the United States—one in 10 of us is now turning to food stamps—these questions take on new urgency.

To begin to conceive of the possibility of a culture of empowered citizens making democracy work for them, real-life stories help—not models to adopt wholesale, but examples that capture key lessons. For me, the story of Brazil’s fourth largest city, Belo Horizonte, is a rich trove of such lessons. Belo, a city of 2.5 million people, once had 11 percent of its population living in absolute poverty, and almost 20 percent of its children going hungry. Then in 1993, a newly elected administration declared food a right of citizenship. The officials said, in effect: If you are too poor to buy food in the market—you are no less a citizen. I am still accountable to you.

The new mayor, Patrus Ananias—now leader of the federal anti-hunger effort—began by creating a city agency, which included assembling a 20-member council of citizen, labor, business, and church representatives to advise in the design and implementation of a new food system. The city already involved regular citizens directly in allocating municipal resources—the “participatory budgeting” that started in the 1970s and has since spread across Brazil. During the first six years of Belo’s food-as-a-right policy, perhaps in response to the new emphasis on food security, the number of citizens engaging in the city’s participatory budgeting process doubled to more than 31,000.

The city agency developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food, especially by weaving together the interests of farmers and consumers. It offered local family farmers dozens of choice spots of public space on which to sell to urban consumers, essentially redistributing retailer mark-ups on produce—which often reached 100 percent—to consumers and the farmers. Farmers’ profits grew, since there was no wholesaler taking a cut. And poor people got access to fresh, healthy food.

When my daughter Anna and I visited Belo Horizonte to write Hope’s Edge we approached one of these stands. A farmer in a cheerful green smock, emblazoned with “Direct from the Countryside,” grinned as she told us, “I am able to support three children from my five acres now. Since I got this contract with the city, I’ve even been able to buy a truck.”

The improved prospects of these Belo farmers were remarkable considering that, as these programs were getting underway, farmers in the country as a whole saw their incomes drop by almost half.

In addition to the farmer-run stands, the city makes good food available by offering entrepreneurs the opportunity to bid on the right to use well-trafficked plots of city land for “ABC” markets, from the Portuguese acronym for “food at low prices.” Today there are 34 such markets where the city determines a set price—about two-thirds of the market price—of about twenty healthy items, mostly from in-state farmers and chosen by store-owners. Everything else they can sell at the market price.

“For ABC sellers with the best spots, there’s another obligation attached to being able to use the city land,” a former manager within this city agency, Adriana Aranha, explained. “Every weekend they have to drive produce-laden trucks to the poor neighborhoods outside of the city center, so everyone can get good produce.”

Another product of food-as-a-right thinking is three large, airy “People’s Restaurants” (Restaurante Popular), plus a few smaller venues, that daily serve 12,000 or more people using mostly locally grown food for the equivalent of less than 50 cents a meal. When Anna and I ate in one, we saw hundreds of diners—grandparents and newborns, young couples, clusters of men, mothers with toddlers. Some were in well-worn street clothes, others in uniform, still others in business suits.

“I’ve been coming here every day for five years and have gained six kilos,” beamed one elderly, energetic man in faded khakis.

“It’s silly to pay more somewhere else for lower quality food,” an athletic-looking young man in a military police uniform told us. “I’ve been eating here every day for two years. It’s a good way to save money to buy a house so I can get married,” he said with a smile.

No one has to prove they’re poor to eat in a People’s Restaurant, although about 85 percent of the diners are. The mixed clientele erases stigma and allows “food with dignity,” say those involved.

Belo’s food security initiatives also include extensive community and school gardens as well as nutrition classes. Plus, money the federal government contributes toward school lunches, once spent on processed, corporate food, now buys whole food mostly from local growers.

“We’re fighting the concept that the state is a terrible, incompetent administrator,” Adriana explained. “We’re showing that the state doesn’t have to provide everything, it can facilitate. It can create channels for people to find solutions themselves.”

For instance, the city, in partnership with a local university, is working to “keep the market honest in part simply by providing information,” Adriana told us. They survey the price of 45 basic foods and household items at dozens of supermarkets, then post the results at bus stops, online, on television and radio, and in newspapers so people know where the cheapest prices are.

The shift in frame to food as a right also led the Belo hunger-fighters to look for novel solutions. In one successful experiment, egg shells, manioc leaves, and other material normally thrown away were ground and mixed into flour for school kids’ daily bread. This enriched food also goes to nursery school children, who receive three meals a day courtesy of the city.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world. But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

The result of these and other related innovations?

In just a decade Belo Horizonte cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up.

The cost of these efforts?

Around $10 million annually, or less than 2 percent of the city budget. That’s about a penny a day per Belo resident.

Behind this dramatic, life-saving change is what Adriana calls a “new social mentality”—the realization that “everyone in our city benefits if all of us have access to good food, so—like health care or education—quality food for all is a public good.”

The Belo experience shows that a right to food does not necessarily mean more public handouts (although in emergencies, of course, it does.) It can mean redefining the “free” in “free market” as the freedom of all to participate. It can mean, as in Belo, building citizen-government partnerships driven by values of inclusion and mutual respect.

And when imagining food as a right of citizenship, please note: No change in human nature is required! Through most of human evolution—except for the last few thousand of roughly 200,000 years—Homo sapiens lived in societies where pervasive sharing of food was the norm. As food sharers, “especially among unrelated individuals,” humans are unique, writes Michael Gurven, an authority on hunter-gatherer food transfers. Except in times of extreme privation, when some eat, all eat.

Before leaving Belo, Anna and I had time to reflect a bit with Adriana. We wondered whether she realized that her city may be one of the few in the world taking this approach—food as a right of membership in the human family. So I asked, “When you began, did you realize how important what you are doing was? How much difference it might make? How rare it is in the entire world?”

Listening to her long response in Portuguese without understanding, I tried to be patient. But when her eyes moistened, I nudged our interpreter. I wanted to know what had touched her emotions.

“I knew we had so much hunger in the world,” Adriana said. “But what is so upsetting, what I didn’t know when I started this, is it’s so easy. It’s so easy to end it.”

Adriana’s words have stayed with me. They will forever. They hold perhaps Belo’s greatest lesson: that it is easy to end hunger if we are willing to break free of limiting frames and to see with new eyes—if we trust our hard-wired fellow feeling and act, no longer as mere voters or protesters, for or against government, but as problem-solving partners with government accountable to us.

Frances Moore Lappé wrote this article as part of Food for Everyone, the Spring 2009 issue of YES! Magazine. Frances is the author of many books including Diet for a Small Planet and Get a Grip, co-founder of Food First and the Small Planet Institute, and a YES! contributing editor.

The author thanks Dr. M. Jahi Chappell for his contribution to the article.

Interested?
Walking Through Fear: interview with Frances Moore Lappé.

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This is a chart that should put every Indian into shame. Not only an Indian, but also those who swear in the name of democracy. How can people's representatives remain immune to the growing scourge of hunger? Shouldn't this provoke you to ask the basic: why should hunger exist in a democracy?

The illustration above [released ahead of the Sept 20-22 Summit of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)] reflects the monumental failure of the global leadership to address the worst tragedy that a democracy can inflict. Amartya Sen had said that famine does not happen in a democracy, but let me add: hunger perpetuates in a democracy.

The hunger map above is also a reflection of the dishonesty shown by the international leadership to fight hunger. Hunger is the biggest scandal, a crime against humanity that goes unpunished. At the 1996 World Food Summit, political leaders had pledged to pull out half the world's hungry (at that time the figure was somewhere around 840 million) by the years 2015. This commitment was applauded by one and all, including the academicians, policy makers, development agencies and charities, and you name it.

This commitment alone demonstrated the political indifference to mankind's worst crime. Considering FAO's own projections of the number of people succumbing to hunger and malnutrition at around 24,000 a day, I had then said that by the year 2015, the 20 years time limit they had decided to work on, 172 million people would die of hunger. And when the world meets for the MDG Summit in a few days from now, almost 15 years since the WFS 1996, close to 128 million people have already died from hunger.

And you call this an urgency?

No one across the world stood up to call the bluff.

Hunger has instead grown. By 2010, the world should have removed at least 300 million people from the hunger list. It has however added another 85 million to raise the tally to 925 million. In my understanding, this too is a gross understatement. The horrendous face of hunger is being kept deliberately hidden by lowering the figures. In India, for instance, the map shows 238 million people living in hunger. This is certainly incorrect. A new government estimate points to 37.2 per cent of the population living in poverty, which means the hunger tally in India is officially at 450 million. Even this is an understatement. The poverty line is kept so stringent in India (at Rs 17 per person per day) that in the same amount you cannot even think of feeding a pet dog. I wonder how can the poor manage two-square meals a day under this classification.

Hunger is also growing in major democracies. In the US, it has broken a 14-year record, and one in every ten Americans lives in hunger. In Europe, 40 million people are hungry, almost equivalent to the population of Spain. Interestingly, most of the countries in the hunger chart are following democratic forms of governance. And yet, the only country which has made a sizable difference to global hunger is China, which as we all know is not a democracy.

Is it so difficult to remove hunger? The answer is No.

While there is no political will to fight hunger, the business of hunger is growing at a phenomenal rate. The economic growth paradigm that the world is increasingly following in principle aims at minimising hunger, poverty and inequality. But in reality acerbates hunger and inequality. Economists have programmed the mindset of generations in such a manner that everyone genuinely believes that the roadmap to remove hunger passes through GDP. The more the GDP the more will be the opportunities for the poor to move out of the poverty trap. Nothing could be further away from this faulty economic thinking. This is the biggest economic folly that a flawed education system has inflicted.

And it is primarily for this reason that after the 2008 economic meltdown, the international leadership pumped in more than $ 20 trillion to bail out the rich and crooked. On the other hand, removing hunger and poverty from the face of the Earth would cost the world only $ 1 trillion at the most, for which the resources are unavailable. But there is all the money in the world to fill the pockets of the rich, hoping that it would one day trickle down to the poor. Privatising the profits, and socialising the costs. Isn't this political and economic dishonesty?

Hungry stomach offers tremendous business opportunities. Rich economies are buttressed by speculation and free trade in food and agriculture. Opening up of the developing economies provides them opportunities to sell unwanted technologies/goods in the name of development. Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector sees the poor as a business opportunity to bail out the companies from sluggish growth. Micro-finance steps in to empty the pockets of the poor, again in the name of development. So much so that even Climate Change provides tremendous scope to milk the poor.

All this is happening in a democratic world.

With greater power to build alliances across boundaries, the Davids of the world are having more success throwing off the Goliaths

It was the kind of fight in which the power seems so one-sided that the conclusion is foregone. The indigenous Dongria Kondh of Niyamgiri, India, saw their homeland and their sacred mountains threatened by Vedanta Resources, an international mining company that planned to build an enormous bauxite mine in the heart of their land. The Dongria used themselves as roadblocks to keep Vedanta employees away, but it was hard to imagine that their resistance would have long-term effects.

But as word of their struggle spread, so did the resistance to the mine: Celebrities took up the cause, and shareholders from major firms to the Church of England and the Norwegian government withdrew their investments from Vedanta. The Indian government began to take a closer look at the project.

Last week, the government withdrew its permission from the mining proposal. The Indian environment ministry also accused a Vedanta subsidiary of violating conservation and environmental regulations. In reaction to this news, Vedanta stock plummeted almost 6 percent.

Improbable Victories

The Vedanta decision is just the most recent of many seemingly improbable victories by indigenous and environmental groups around the planet. Collective actions by ordinary people—increasingly aided by sophisticated use of information networks to connect people across distances—have stopped destructive practices by industries around the world.

In Ecuador and Peru, tribes like the Shuar and Achuar provide a powerful example—once enemies, they have now have joined forces with each other, as well as with NGOs like the U.S.-based Pachamama Alliance, to block the destruction of their homelands by foreign oil companies. In addition to organizing the largest environmental lawsuit in history (against Chevron/Texaco) in Ecuador, their actions forced the government of Peru to turn back two of decrees that would have opened large areas of the rainforest to investment and allowed projects to be permitted without an opportunity for indigenous review.

Indeed, throughout the Amazon, tribes have united—to a large degree by employing modern technologies—in order to halt the auctioning off and destruction of large parts of the rainforest. Ambrosio Uwak, an indigenous leader, was cited in a London Times article stating that two-way radios enabled his group to mobilize more than 15,000 people to blockade roads and resist oil drilling.

The triumphs of indigenous and green movements clearly demonstrate the importance of forming alliances, of proactively combining groups and resources in order to send a clear message to the corporatocracy. The recent successes also point out the role that global communications can play in uniting allies around a common cause.

Local Movements Go Global

A few years ago, I was standing beside a glacier high in the Himalayas, listening to the leader of a nomadic clan lamenting the fact that his people would never have telephones because the lines could not reach them. Several months later, I heard a similar complaint from a tribal chief deep in the Amazon. Today, they both have access to satellite cell phones—and they are using them to organize their people in their fight against social injustice and environmental destruction.

For the first time in history, we are all talking to each other. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Just as the invention of the printing press took control of published texts in Europe out of the hands of the Catholic Church, today the Internet and social networking are allowing people to share information and strategies directly with each other, challenging the power of the mainstream media. From the frozen Arctic to the scorching Sahara, we are connecting with each other in ways that could not have been imagined a decade ago.

The threat the bauxite mine posed to the Dongria Kondh tribe was exposed to the wider world when a video of people dressed as Na’vi (from the film Avatar) protesting at Vedanta’s London shareholder meetings was posted on YouTube; it highlighted the struggle against Vedanta Resources by comparing the company’s operations to the devastation portrayed in the movie. Something similar happened after a rally of Ecuador’s indigenous people, organized around the showing of Avatar in Quito, was posted on blogs across the planet. When residents of the Brazilian Amazon marched against the Belo Monte dam, Survival International reported that over 500 indigenous people from 27 tribes converged near the Xingu River to proclaim a message that was flashed around the globe on Twitter: “Defend the Xingu: Stop Belo Monte.”

Success Is Contagious

We’re now able to better share our victories as well as our struggles and strategies for resistance. It is easy to get caught up in all the negativity distributed by the mainstream media, to believe that we the people are powerless. The corporatocracy—the owners of those media—want us to believe just that. But the victories are many, for indigenous peoples as well as for others who seek to sever the shackles of corporate imperialism. Examples of our strength, our ability to force change, are becoming more prevalent every day. To cite just a few more recent victories:

> Kenya passed a referendum that strengthens indigenous peoples and their rights; it also changed its constitution to curb authoritarian presidential powers and place more control in the hands of the people;

> The Karuk of California joined forces with fishermen and environmental groups to win a moratorium on suction dredge mining, thus preventing further damage to salmon runs;
Ecuador ratified a new constitution granting inalienable rights to nature;

> In a resolution ratified by more than 90 percent of its citizens, Iceland refused to pay off debts the IMF and other international banks claim it owes—saying the people had been hoodwinked by economic hit men;

> Greeks took to the streets to protest harsh austerity measures imposed by the European Union and IMF;

> Argentine workers re-opened and successfully ran factories closed by owners who refused to pay fair wages;

> WikiLeaks continued to expose war crimes allegedly committed by the U.S. military, despite pressure brought by the CIA and the U.S. and other governments.

> University students in the U.S. convinced their schools not to renew their contracts with Nike until the company compensated jilted workers in Honduras—which it agreed to do.

The recent and continuing triumphs of indigenous, environmental, and other movements in support of people and nature demonstrate that we the people hold more power than we often believe. In proving that victory is possible, the Dongria Kondh offer each of us the inspiration to work for a world that our children and grandchildren will want to inherit. In the light of their achievements, we see a path we all can follow.

John Perkins wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. John is the author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman and, most recently, Hoodwinked: An Economic Hitman Reveals Why the World Financial Markets Imploded—and What We Need to Do to Remake Them.

Research and editorial input provided by Nettie Hartsock.

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Imagine our declining pollinators ? bees, moths, butterflies and bats ? coming upon thousands of acres of toxic trees, genetically engineered so that every cell in the tree exudes pesticide, from crown to root. Imagine a world without pollinators. Without seed dispersers. Without soil microbes.

It would be a silent forest, a killing forest, an alien forest. No wonder Vandana Shiva scoffs at the moniker, biotechnology. ?This is not a life technology. It's a death science.?

Genetically engineered forests are a holocaust on nature. An award-winning documentary, A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees (2005, 46 mins) details the appalling effects. (You can buy the full length film at Amazon. )

Global Justice Ecology Project director, Ann Petermann defines the issue: ?Genetically engineered trees are the greatest threat to the world's remaining forests since the invention of the chainsaw.?

Jim Hightower calls them, ?wildly invasive, explosively flammable, and insatiably thirsty for ground water.?

If planting a sterile, killer forest isn't freaky enough, some GM trees will be viable and can and will contaminate natural species. Tree pollen can travel over 600 miles , according to a model created by Duke University, reported Petermann in 2006. Another study found pine pollen 400 miles from the nearest pines. This year, a scientist was surprised to find viable seeds 25 miles offshore .

?Sterile trees would also be able to spread their transgenes through vegetative propagation,? notes Petermann . Unlike with animals, being sexually sterile does not preclude reproduction when it comes to plants.

GM contamination occurs around the globe, as documented by GM Watch and the GM Contamination Register (among others). The technology cannot be contained. Genetically modified organisms are dominant over natural species and will forever alter Earth's natural plants.

By the way, the latest batch of approved GM trees ? 200,000 eucalyptus for seven southern states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and South Carolina) ? are engineered to be cold tolerant. A lawsuit has been filed to overturn their approval.

Chemically altering the atmosphere to be cooler

Not only are the powers-that-be genetically altering trees, food crops and animals, they're also chemically altering the atmosphere. In 1976, the United Nations banned hostile environmental modification , after investigative reporter Jack Anderson uncovered its use in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Next month, October 2010, the UN will vote on a resolution to stop all EnMod activities.

While the thought police label chemtrails a ?conspiracy theory,? it's unlikely that the UN scientific body calling for their termination would base such a recommendation on fiction. Those interested in scientific and legal proof can review the sources in my piece on atmospheric geoengineering .

Climate change is still being debated, especially after the University of East Anglia was caught publishing false data showing temperature increases. Significant errors in a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where it also falsely asserted as fact that Himilaya glaciers would melt by 2035, also fuel the debate.

Recently, an independent investigative body told the IPCC to stop lobbying on behalf of global warming programs. Members of the IPCC were also ordered to reveal their financial connections to such programs.

The temperature of the planet is characterized as too warm, and so the wealthy and powerful want to cool down the planet. If they do, those cold-tolerant GM trees will survive.

Altering the chemistry of the hydrosphere

Governments also support altering the chemistry of the hydrosphere. There is still much debate as to whether iron-seeding the oceans can remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to actually cool the planet. But, like the Cap and Trade scam, profit can be made so policy makers still support the idea.

Beyond deliberate attempts at geoengineering, we also have industry to blame for doing so. For over a century, humanity has been conned into poisoning the environment with toxic chemicals that end up in our streams, lakes and oceans. ?Conventional? agriculture and industrial pollution is killing us .

Corporations profit by this, of course, enabled and protected by governments. The most recent example, allowing BP to spray at least two million gallons of toxic oil dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico, is a case in point. This is after the Earth Day Blowout that released up to 350 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. Those dispersants enable oil to more readily penetrate the bodies of sea life, and they interfere with oil-eating microbes .

They're destroying an ocean and the US Senate is giving BP a pass. It refuses to grant subpoena power to investigate, let alone criminally prosecute. Forget partisanship, says Dateline Zero , ?they are the same party, and they get their money from the same people, they get their orders from the same people ? and that includes big oil.?

The actions of the corporations involved and the governmental agencies charged with regulating them have caused an ongoing Extinction Level Event.

This is happening all over the world. Corporations are destroying the planet under the guise of seeking profit. But their ecocidal activities are so horrendous and so ubiquitous that profits seem hardly plausible as authentic motive.

When taken together ? chemically altered skies and waters and genetically altered plants and animals ? reasonable minds cannot but wonder at the alien transformation of Planet Earth that we are witnessing.

The violence in Maputo is just the latest manifestation of the crippling shortcomings of the global economy

It has been a summer of record temperatures – Japan had its hottest summer on record, as did South Florida and New York. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Niger are flooded and the eastern US is mopping up after hurricane Earl. None of these individual events can definitively be attributed to global warming. But to see how climate change will play out in the 21st century, you needn't look to the Met Office. Look, instead, to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique's "food riots" to see what happens when extreme natural phenomena interact with our unjust economic systems.

The immediate causes of the protests in Mozambique's capital, Maputo, and Chimoio about 500 miles north, are a 30% price increase for bread, compounding a recent double-digit increase for water and energy. When nearly three-quarters of the household budget is spent on food, that's a hike few Mozambicans can afford.

Deeper reasons for Mozambique's price hike can be found a continent away. Wheat prices have soared on global markets over the summer in large part because Russia, the world's third largest exporter, has suffered catastrophic fires in its main production areas. These blazes, in turn, find their origin both in poor firefighting infrastructure and Russia's worst heatwave in over a century. On Thursday, Vladimir Putin extended an export ban in response to a new wave of wildfires in its grain belt, sending further signals to the markets that Russian wheat wouldn't be available outside the country. With Mozambique importing over 60% of the wheat its people needs, the country has been held hostage by international markets.

This may sound familiar. In 2008, the prices of oil, wheat, corn and rice peaked on international markets – corn prices almost tripled between 2005-2008. In the process, dozens of food-importing countries experienced food riots.

Behind the 2008 protests were, first, natural events that looked like an excerpt from the meteorological section of the Book of Revelation – drought in Australia, crop disease in central Asia, floods in south-east Asia. These were compounded by the social systems through which their effects were felt. Oil prices were sky-high, which meant higher transport costs and fossil fuel-based fertiliser prices. Biofuel policy, particularly in the US, shifted land and crops from food into ethanol production, diverting food from stomachs to fuel tanks. Longer term trends in population growth and meat consumption in developing countries also added to the stress. Financial speculators piled into food commodities, driving prices yet further beyond the reach of the poor. Finally, some retailers used the opportunity to raise prices still further, and while commodity prices have fallen back to pre-crisis levels, most of us have yet to see the savings.

Is this 2008 all over again? The weather has gone wild, meat prices have hit a 20-year high, groceries are being looted and heads of state are urging calm. The view from commodities desks, however, is that we're not in quite as dire straits as two years ago. Fuel is relatively cheap and grain stores well stocked. We're on track for the third-highest wheat crop ever, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). While all this is true, it misses the point: for most hungry people, 2008 isn't over. The events of 2007-2008 tipped more than 100 million into hunger and the global recession has meant that they have stayed there. In 2006, the number of undernourished people was 854 million. In 2009, it was 1.02 billion – the highest level since records began. The hardest hit by these price rises, in the US and around the world, were female-headed households.

Not only are the hungry still around, but food riots have continued. In India, double-digit food price inflation was met by violent street protests at the end of 2009. The price rises were, again, the result of both extreme and unpredictable monsoons in 2009 and an increasingly faulty social safety net to prevent hunger. There have been frequent public protests about the price of wheat in Egypt this year, and Serbia and Pakistan have seen protests too.

Although commodity prices fell after 2008, the food system's architecture has remained largely the same over the past two decades. Bill Clinton has offered several mea culpas for the international trade and development policies that spawned the food crisis. Earlier this year, he blamed himself for Haiti's vulnerability to price fluctuations. "I did that," he said in testimony to the US Senate. "I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else." More generally, Clinton suggested in 2008 that "food is not a commodity like others… it is crazy for us to think we can develop a lot of these countries [by] treating food like it was a colour television set."

Yet global commodity speculators continue to treat food as if it were the same as television sets, with little end in sight to what the World Development Movement has called "gambling on hunger in financial markets". The recent US Wall Street Reform Act contained some measures that might curb these speculative activities, but their full scope has yet to be clarified. Europe doesn't have a mechanism to regulate these kinds of speculative trades at all. Agriculture in the global south is still subject to the "Washington consensus" model, driven by markets and with governments taking a back seat to the private sector. And the only reason biofuels aren't more prominent is that the oil they're designed to replace is currently cheap.

Clearly, neither grain speculation, nor forcing countries to rely on international markets for food, nor encouraging the use of agricultural resources for fuel instead of nourishment are natural phenomena. These are political decisions, taken and enforced not only by Bill Clinton, but legions of largely unaccountable international development professionals. The consequences of these decisions are ones with which people in the global south live everyday. Which brings us back to Mozambique.

Recall that Mozambique's street protests coincided not only with a rise in the price of bread, but with electricity and water price hikes too. In an interview with Portugal's Lusa news agency, Alice Mabota of the Mozambican League of Human Rights didn't use the term "food riots". In her words: "The government… can't understand or doesn't want to understand that this is a protest against the higher cost of living." The action on the streets isn't simply a protest about food, but a wider act of rebellion. Half of Mozambique's poor already suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the FAO. The extreme weather behind the grain fires in Russia transformed a political context in which citizens were increasingly angry and frustrated with their own governments.

Yesterday, I reached Diamantino Nhampossa, the co-ordinator of Mozambique's União Nacional de Camponeses (National Peasants Union of Mozambique). "These protests are going to end," he told me. "But they will always come back. This is the gift that the development model we are following has to offer." Like many Mozambicans, he knows full well which way the wind blows.

In 2009, the mainstream U.S. media reported with satisfaction that the Pakistani government had finally responded positively to the United States and NATO's demands[1] for an aggressive military policy aimed at depriving the resurgent Taliban of ?safe havens? in Pakistan.[2] The subsequent offensive, featuring a Pakistani invasion of these areas and aerial assaults by the U.S. and its NATO allies, and has become just another unexceptional element of the open-ended military campaign formerly known as GWOT (the ?Global War on Terror?), but which, under the Obama administration has continued without a name. It receives little attention from the mainstream media, which is focusing its limited attention on Afghanistan, to the exclusion of the other ?hot wars? the U.S. is currently conducting in Iraq and Pakistan.

In neglecting to cover the process and impact of the Pakistan war, the U.S. media has ignored or recorded in a perfunctory manner (often as add-ons to Afghanistan coverage) major developments in this war, particularly the humanitarian crisis it has created.

One vivid, pregnant, and immensely significant instance of this casual treatment of events that alter the history of the host country was the coverage of a recent United Nations report focused on a single campaign in the Pakistan war. The Associated Press[3] reported it thusly: ?More than 200,000 people have fled Pakistan's latest offensive against Taliban militants in the northwest, the United Nations said Monday, as fresh clashes in the remote region killed 41 insurgents and six soldiers.? Later in the article, it emerged that this major displacement in a single region?running at about 50,000 displaced per month?was matched by other campaigns in nearby areas, with a total, according to the United Nations, of 1.3 million refugees ?driven from their home by fighting in the northwest and unable to return.?

But even this 1.3 million refugee figure was still a partial number, because it did not include the impact of the various earlier and parallel campaigns carried out by Pakistan, NATO special forces, and the increasingly infamous drone attacks piloted by remote control from thousands of miles away. These offensives had produced, by June of this year, about 3.5 million displaced persons, including several hundred thousand rendered homeless for more than a year.[4] This humanitarian disaster was therefore one magnitude greater than the agony of Darfur, which in mid-2010 was estimated to have displaced 2.7 million people,[5] though Pakistan's disaster still lagged behind the Iraqi total, which had reached or exceeded five million.[6]

What never appears in the U.S. media is the process by which these military offensives translate into massive displacement. Unlike our unformed image of these wars, which pictures people fleeing the fighting and then returning when (and if) peace and/or security returns, these military campaigns leave permanent damage behind that usually?at least given the current goals and policies of the United States?have little chance of being repaired. Therefore, the displacement is likely to be long term for a substantial proportion of its victims, with all the misery that refugee status implies.

Take the casually reported offensive in the tribal regions of Afghanistan. Kathy Kelly, an independent reporter and human rights activist with years of experience in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region[7] described to Democracy Now one facet of the degradation process[8] that she witnessed in her last trip to the tribal areas of Pakistan The linchpin of this particular disaster was the systematic targeting of electrical facilities by the NATO and Pakistani military, considered necessary to disabling the resistance. Soon after the beginning of the offensive, the affected cities were delivering electricity for only part of the day, creating a chain reaction:

The textile industry can't function if their factories are closed down with eight hours' loss of electricity every day. And so the numbers of people that are jobless, homeless, and out on the streets and willing to demonstrate, which is very risky to do in a country with so much military control. But we spent a long time sitting with the Pakistani Clerks Association, who were out demonstrating. They were in their third month. Students were in their tenth day of demonstrating, saying that they had all been summarily dismissed from their jobs, and what would they do?

Situations like those created in Pakistan therefore generate both protests?which becomes more and more insistent as the immiseration deepens?and displacement?in which people search for a location with better prospects. Some do both. Others will seek to wait out the crisis and hope for a better day. But since these kinds of disasters do not go away, people's patience is soon exhausted. They will not sit still when their children are starving or without shelter at night, or without sufficient clothes.

The displaced people come to constitute the visible humanitarian crisis that the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees investigates and seeks to ameliorate. In the meantime, the collateral protests are regularly interpreted (often correctly) as anger against the military, the local government, and the foreign occupation. Whatever form the protests take (ranging from petitions to demonstrations to angry mobs to systematic insurgency to terrorist attacks) they become justification for renewed military onslaughts, thus bringing the process full circle.

This cycle of military aggression, immiseration, displacement and protest, leading to new military offensives aimed at definitive pacification, characterizes the visible (Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan) and less visible (Somalia, Yemen) interventions undertaken by the United States as part of the military strategy formerly known as GWOT.

But why doesn't the U.S. and its client governments move quickly to repair the damage caused by the attack, thus damping the protest and ending mass displacement? In Pakistan, then, one might look for a rapid restoration of electrical service in affected cities, followed as quickly as possible by revival of the textile industry, leading to revival of the local economy and, in the middle term perhaps, improvement over the pre-war conditions. This strategy, currently labeled as Counterinsurgency Warfare, is the official goal of all current U.S. campaigns.

But what actually happens is quite the reverse: a further erosion of local living conditions that it an inevitable part of the strategy formerly knows as GWOT. In pacified areas, where resistance is quiescent or absent, the process of U.S. sponsored reconstruction has a kind of reverse Midas touch, contributing to the immiseration of the local community. Take the example of the Iraqi electrical system, which was also a major military target, both in the earlier Gulf War (in 1990) and in the 2003 invasion. By the time the Hussein regime was overthrown in spring of 2003,[9] electrical generating capacity had been reduced by almost 50% from a 1990 high of 9000 megawatts to less than 5000 megawatts, leading to daily outages everywhere in the country. In the six subsequent years the U.S. invested over five billion dollars in the electrical system aimed at restoring and expanding the system to cover the dramatically increased demand from newly introduced electrical appliances and newly built U.S. facilities. Nevertheless, capacity stagnated at 5000 megawatts, barely above the prewar total, and far less than half the needed output (estimate in 2010 at 14,000 megawatts). All over Iraq, cities suffered with as little as two hours of electricity per day, far less than was available even after the destruction wrought by the 2003 overthrow of the Ba'athist regime.

This failure was not a result of ongoing fighting that prevented reconstruction; in fact, most of the five billion dollar U.S. effort had been invested in areas where there had been very little fighting, though many of these areas became insurgent centers as the electrical and associated crises continued.

The failure to rebuild the electrical system was, instead, a consequence of the ambitious goals that the Bush Administration had for its occupation of Iraq, goals that have become central to the policies of the Obama administration as well. They were summarized succinctly in the 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States, the official statement of U.S. military goals: ?We seek a Middle East of independent states, at peace with each other, and fully participating in an open global market of goods, services, and ideas,? which would ?ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade?[10] The goals were summarized by retired army colonel Douglas Macgregor?a West Point class mate of ousted Afghanistan commander David McChrystal?as an attempt to ?reshape the culture of the Islamic world.?[11]

And they were embraced by President Obama in his major policy statement about Afghanistan when he promised a ?dramatic increase in our civilian effort? designed to ?To advance security, opportunity, and justice -- not just in Kabul, but from the bottom up in the provinces -- we need agricultural specialists and educators; engineers and lawyers. That is how we can help the Afghan government? develop an economy that isn't dominated by illicit drugs.?[12]

In short, a fundamental goal of the full scale U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan?and the aerial and Special Forces invasion of the tribal regions of Pakistan?is political, social, and economic transformation.

In Iraq, the electrical system reconstruction was part of this larger goal of transforming Iraqi society. In this instance a major feature of the campaign involved destroying the Ba'athist government and replacing its state controlled economic and physical infrastructure with a privatized system integrated into the globalized economy. This meant dismantling state-owned electrical and construction companies and contracting with international businesses to replace the existing facilities with proprietary technology, replace Iraqi professionals with their own technicians, and replace Iraqi workers with their own imported labor force. In implementing this transformation with no-bid cost-plus contracts and no oversight by either the U.S. government or the Iraqis, the politically connected?aptly called ?beltway bandits?[13] by journalist Ann Jones? contractors were rewarded for maximizing profit on every element of the operation, creating vast cost overruns, and leaving the work incomplete if and when supplementary funds were not made available.

One incredible example in the reconstruction of the Iraqi electrical grid involved the U.S. based construction company Bechtel, which removed 26 functioning Iraqi oil driven generators and replaced them with new proprietary gas driven turbines rated at twice the megawatt output.[14] However, since Iraq does not capture its natural gas, all but seven of the turbines could not be activated. With no new contracts to remedy the problem Bechtel walked away, taking its profits back to the United States. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers then gerryrigged the turbines so that they could use fuel oil, though this fix-up reduced output by 50%, making the new turbines no more productive than the one that had been ripped out. Iraqi technicians, excluded from the construction process and untrained in operating and repairing Bechtel's proprietary turbines, struggled to maintain the half-capacity output, but the fuel oil clogged the system and?over a two year period?one after another went off line, temporarily or permanently. Ultimately the newly installed system produced far less output than the one it replaced.

What the Iraqi electrical system debacle exemplified is how the effort to rebuild Iraq (and/or Afghanistan or Pakistan) ?through free markets and free trade? produced the opposite of reconstruction and revival. The areas served by the Bechtel turbines experienced a further degradation of their living conditions, as the absence or shortage of electricity undermined the viability of local industry and commerce, made household living difficult and sometimes impossible, and led to all manner of social pathologies as desperate people turned to desperate measures. The five billion dollar investment by the United States in the Iraqi electrical system produced ample profits for international businesses and continued immiseration for Iraqis.

The impact of U.S. sponsored reconstruction thus produces a second vicious cycle intermingled and complementary to the military-impelled cycle of pacification, destruction, immiseration, resistance, and re-pacification experienced by the NATO/Pakistani offensive in Orakzai region. In this pattern, pacification?violently accomplished or unresisted?is succeeded by an effort to deconstruct the old system and replace it with service from globalized enterprises. Instead of vivifying local life, this effort produces deconstruction and immiseration, followed by displacement and resistance, leading to new efforts at pacification.

Throughout the six years, the reverse Midas touch applied to the Iraqi electrical system?and to other key targets of U.S. reconstruction, including the provision of potable water, the westernization of education, and the privatization of medical care? has been the focus of discontent and resistance, ranging from peaceful demands for service, siphoning off electricity for private purposes, sabotage when facilities were seen as being misused, and various forms of violent protest. In one dramatic moment, the heat of the summer in 2010 triggered nationwide protests against electrical shortages and prices. In Baghdad, where prices were doubled at the start of the summer, families complained about being charged 100 dollars per month (about a third of average monthly income) for two hours of electricity per day.[15] Protests, especially in the hard hit poorer neighborhoods became a daily event. In Basra, the second largest city in Iraq, police ?opened fire on a mob enraged by power cuts that reduced electricity availability to below two hours per day,? killing two and wounded many others. In Nasiriyah, a town with little history of violent resistance to the occupation, police used water cannon to repel demonstrators after they injured 17 police while ?trying to storm provincial headquarters.?

The protests produced small but significant concessions from the Iraqi government, including the resignation of the Electricity Minister, price cuts in some areas, and promises of increased output in specific localities where protests had been particularly ferocious The larger structural issue remained unaddressed, with the Iraqi government announcing contracts with multinational electrical companies (General Electric and Siemens) to increase capacity to approximately 70% of demand in the next few years. The new contracts, like that signed by Bechtel, contained all the same incentives that led to the Bechtel debacle six years earlier.

The two concentric cycles?pacification-immiseration-resistance-pacification and deconstruction-immiseration-protest-deconstruction?work together to create a cycle of misery. With or without violent confrontations between indigenous groups and occupation forces, each cycle creates larger masses of destitution, as the social, physical, and economic infrastructure continues to decline?under the weight of military occupation and/or the impact of globalized deconstruction. The double weight of military campaigns and contracts with multinational companies, aimed at reshaping the ?culture of the Islamic world?[16] and vivifying the host economies ?through free markets and free trade?[17] works only to further the immiseration of the targeted communities, and to guarantee wave after wave of protest. And, in embedded in these cycles of misery are the ever-enlarging humanitarian crises, made visible by growing armies of the displaced, deprived of the basic necessities of human life.

[1] AssociatedPress 100217 ? Pakistan Blasted for creating Taliban Safe Haven http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,494446,00.html Pakistan Blasted for Creating Taliban Safe Haven With Islamic Law Deal, Tuesday , February 17, 2009

[2]AssociatedPress 091018 ? Taliban vow to defeat Pakistan offensivehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33367064/

[3] AssociatedPress 100412 ? Abbot ? Pakistan Taliban offensive causes over 200,000 to felle.

Pakistan Taliban Offensive Causes Over 200,000 To Flee

SEBASTIAN ABBOT | 04/12/10 08:06 PM |

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/12/pakistan-taliban-offensiv_n_533 ... - #

[4] DemocracyNow 100610 ? Kelly ? US secret war in Pakistan

June 10, 2010 Peace Activist Kathy Kelly on the Secret US War in Pakistan http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/10/peace_activist_kathy_kelly_on_the

[5] http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Resettling-Darfurs-Displaced-Raises ...

[6] Citation for Iraq.

[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=kathy-kelly

[8] http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/10/peace_activist_kathy_kelly_on_the

[9] NYT 100801 ? Myers ? a benchmark of progress

August 1, 2010 A Benchmark of Progress, Electrical Grid Fails Iraqis By STEVEN LEE MYERS

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/world/middleeast/02electricity.html?_r=1

[10] National Security Council, 2006, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, March, 2006 (DC, White House, U.S. Government) found at
http://www.intelros.org/lib/doklady/usa_nss_2006.html and at

http://books.google.com/books?id=ke0FKjVsvIUC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=%22we+ ... (download June, 21, 2010)

[11] Michael Hastings, 2010, ?The Runaway General,? Rolling Stone"(June 22), found at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25796.htm (July 7, 2010). Macgregor saw this effort as hopeless: "The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people?. The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.?

[12] ?A New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan? (Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Friday 27 March 2009); Transcript ; White House Press Office , Washington, DC http://www.truthout.org:80/032709R

[13] Ann Jones, 2009, ?The Afghan Reconstruction Boondoggle,? Tom Dispatch (January 11), found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175019/ann_jones_the_afghan_reconstructi ...

[14] This discussion is taken from Schwartz, 2008, pp. 155-159.

[15] AsiaTimes 100626 = McDermid and Waleed

Jun 26, 2010

Dark days for Iraq as power crisis bites By Charles McDermid and Khalid Waleed

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LF26Ak01.html

[16] Michael Hastings, 2010, ?The Runaway General,? Rolling Stone"(June 22), found at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25796.htm (July 7, 2010). Macgregor saw this effort as hopeless: "The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people?. The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.?

[17] National Security Council, 2006, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, March, 2006 (DC, White House, U.S. Government) found at
http://www.intelros.org/lib/doklady/usa_nss_2006.html and at

http://books.google.com/books?id=ke0FKjVsvIUC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=%22we+ ... (download June, 21, 2010)

The sluggish international response to the Pakistan floods emergency is actually not all that sluggish, at least compared to these humanitarian crises. Introducing the five most under-funded and ignored humanitarian crises:

1) Iraqi Refugees

The invasion, occupation and subsequent civil war in Iraq war caused one of the biggest refugees crises in recent history. According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are 1.7 million Iraqi refugees living in Syria and Jordan. There are another 1.5 million Iraqi IDPs. The UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released its regional response plan for Iraqi refugees in January. The appeal called for $367 million to support the refugees. So far, though, only 17.9% or $65 million is funded. The United States has contributed $17 million to the fund.

2) Guatemala -- Tropical Storm Agatha

Remember Tropical Storm Agatha? Not many people outside of Central America do either. Nearly 200 people were killed when the first storm of the hurricane season made landfall in Guatemala on May 31. The storm caused extensive damage--most dramatically, it opened up a 200 foot deep sinkhole in the middle of Guatemala's capital. To make matters worse, the storm hit just a day after a major volcanic eruption.Thousands were displaced. An international appeal was launched. The international appeal was ignored. Today, only $5 million of the $15 million has been donated.

3) Uganda

A 20 year civil war in Northern Uganda largely ended in 2006. Still, 400,000 2 million people remain displaced and [nearly 2 million] reliant on humanitarian aid. The so-called "consolidated appeal" for Uganda warned that the humanitarian gains achieved since the cessation of hostilities is in danger of unraveling "due to diminishing humanitarian programming that is unmatched by a significant increase in recovery programs." Only $64 million of the $184 million appeal has been received.

4) Central African Republic

The civil war may have ended in Northern Uganda, but the same group responsible for the destruction in Uganda has reconstituted itself, this time in Central African Republic. Attacks on border villages by the Lord's Resistance Army has left at least 50 villages burned or emptied, according to the UN. But they make up only a relatively small portion of the nearly 200,000 IDPs in CAR. The country also suffers from being in a terrible neighborhood and has suffered from the spill over effects of both the Darfur conflict and conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In fact, over 18,000 refugees from the DRC fled to the Central African Republic last year alone. But despite all these needs, funding for humanitarian operations in CAR remains critically low. It is the fourth most under-funded crisis in the world at $53 million received out of a requested $144 million.

5) Civil Unrest in Kyrgyzstan

In June, the UN launched a $96 million emergency appeal following an anti-Uzbek pogrom in Kyrgyzstan. 100,000 people were displaced in a very short period of time, most across the border to Uzbekistan. Now, they are returning and in need of assistance. Many homes were destroyed livelihoods lost. To date, the UN has received 35 million, or 36% of the total funding needed to care for the humanitarian needs of the displaced.

When the 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division rolled out of Iraq last week, the colonel commanding the brigade told a reporter that his soldiers were “leaving as heroes.”

While we can understand the pride of professional soldiers and the emotion behind that statement, it’s time for Americans -- military and civilian -- to face a difficult reality: In seven years of the deceptively named “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and nine years of “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan, no member of the U.S. has been a hero.

This is not an attack on soldiers, sailors, and Marines. Military personnel may act heroically in specific situations, showing courage and compassion, but for them to be heroes in the truest sense they must be engaged in a legal and morally justifiable conflict. That is not the case with the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq or Afghanistan, and the social pressure on us to use the language of heroism -- or risk being labeled callous or traitors -- undermines our ability to evaluate the politics and ethics of wars in a historical framework.

The legal case is straightforward: Neither invasion had the necessary approval of the United Nations Security Council, and neither was a response to an imminent attack. In both cases, U.S. officials pretended to engage in diplomacy but demanded war. Under international law and the U.S. Constitution (Article 6 is clear that “all Treaties made,” such as the UN Charter, are “the supreme Law of the Land”), both invasions were illegal.

The moral case is also clear: U.S. officials’ claims that the invasions were necessary to protect us from terrorism or locate weapons of mass destruction were never plausible and have been exposed as lies. The world is a more dangerous place today than it was in 2001, when sensible changes in U.S. foreign policy and vigorous law enforcement in collaboration with other nations could have made us safer.

The people who bear the greatest legal and moral responsibility for these crimes are the politicians who send the military to war and the generals who plan the actions, and it may seem unfair to deny the front-line service personnel the label of “hero” when they did their duty as they understood it. But this talk of heroism is part of the way we avoid politics and deny the unpleasant fact that these are imperial wars. U.S. military forces are in the Middle East and Central Asia not to bring freedom but to extend and deepen U.S. power in a region home to the world’s most important energy resources. The nation exercising control there increases its influence over the global economy, and despite all the U.S. propaganda, the world realizes we have tens of thousands of troops on the ground because of those oil and gas reserves.

Individuals can act with courage and compassion serving in imperial armies. There no doubt were soldiers among the British forces in colonial India who acted heroically, and Soviet soldiers stationed in Eastern Europe were capable of bravery. But they were serving in imperial armies engaged in indefensible attempts to dominate and control. They were fighting not for freedom but to advance the interests of elites in their home countries.

I recognize the complexity of the choices the men and women serving in our military face. I am aware that economic realities and the false promises of recruiters lure many of them into service. I am not judging or condemning them. Judgments and condemnations should be aimed at the powerful, who typically avoid their responsibility. For example, a journalist recently asked Ryan Crocker, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to reflect on U.S. culpability for the current state of Iraqi politics. Crocker was reluctant to go there, and then refused even to consider the United States’ moral responsibility: “You can ask the question, was the whole bloody thing a mistake?” he said. “I don’t spend a lot of time on that.”

It’s not surprising U.S. policymakers don’t want to reflect on the invasions, but the public must. Until we can tell the truth about U.S. foreign policy, and how the military is used to advance that policy in illegal and immoral ways, we will remain easy marks for the politicians and their propagandists.

Part of that propaganda campaign is suggesting that critics of the war don’t support the troops, don’t recognize their sacrifices, don’t appreciate their heroism. We escape the propaganda by not playing that game, by telling the truth even when it is painful.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing,” which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Information about the film, distributed by the Media Education Foundation, and an extended interview Jensen conducted with Osheroff are online at http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html.

Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html. To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html.